By Issam Raad | Staff Writer

We were born and thrown into a corrupt matrix that glorifies routine and conventionality. “Normal” individuals survive and spend their free time in places of distraction like restaurants, pubs, cinemas, etc. Few are the available options for individuals who work like slaves for more hours than a human body and soul can tolerate per day. They won’t have the energy to do anything more than entertainment because they are so exhausted from the worries and anxieties of their “jobs”. It is inescapable that that is what they will think about or would prefer to do.

Our free time is not free at all because it’s designed to operate in one way, so why bother considering the other various options? We are unconsciously captured in a prison whose bars are cleverly staged. Its main rule is simple: Kneel, and we’ll keep you safe and secure!

I believe that the system is corrupt, on purpose, and I expound upon this in my book, “Stray in the Matrix”:

“We are being remodeled to disciplined automation under the title of safety and security, but never freedom, with salaries added to the equation to cut off our wings by bribing us to forget our real dreams. Wings that could’ve taken us wherever we desire. But with the interference of corruption in the matrix, our dreams became the basic necessities of surviving, while everything additional became excessive or magical.” (10)

Most consider “life” to be limited to the mundane cycle of ‘work-eat-entertainment-sleep’ and perceive anything out of the cycle as extra. Few still care about where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going.

We shouldn’t pursue basic matters such as accommodation or food, for they are our birthright. We don’t have to waste our lives and energy to be able to survive with the minimum and achieve our dreams only when we save some money, when we’re old, or when it’s too late. But unfortunately, this is the current situation; we either go with the stream or dare to break out of it.

“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt”

—Interstellar

We are born free, so why tolerate the idea of something chaining us and directing our lives? Doesn’t it bother you to see freeborn souls dying from starvation and deprivation, or living precariously due to their “poverty”? Why should money legislatively rank fascinating beings who, if you wander into, will find yourself astray in immense orchards of ideas and emotions that can inspire, create, innovate, and reveal what real wealth is?

“But there’s something that, if fearlessly followed, will always be a glitch in the matrix: The Heart.” (“Stray in the Matrix”, 20)

The heart knows what it needs, but we need to awaken the mind from the matrix’s delusion. The prison door is open, but only by following our hearts can we debunk the bars’ mirage.