What Independence?
They call it independence.
But what exactly did we do with our freedom?
I mean, we know the date.
We know the speeches.
We know when to stand,
when to clap,
when to wave the flag.
We know the words by heart but not the story behind them,
And maybe that is the problem.
We can so easily recite every promise
ever made to this country,
but somehow struggle
to keep even the simplest ones.
We know the system is broken.
We know corruption exists.
We know what is wrong,
we know what continues to persist.
and still, somehow,
we let it persist.
We say,
“Someone should change this.”
Someone.
Always someone.
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But what if that someone
is sitting in this room?
What if it is the student
who thinks one voice is too small
to make a difference at all?
What if it is us
waiting for change
while becoming comfortable
with the things that need to change?
We blame the government.
We blame the system.
We blame the generation before us.
We have become awfully good at pointing backwards
while walking nowhere ourselves.
But one day,
the speeches will belong to us.
The decisions will belong to us.
The responsibility will belong to us.
And when that day comes, what will we be able to say?
That we inherited a dream and kept it safely tucked away?
That we saw what was broken
and decided it was someone else’s problem?
Always someone else…
If we do not have the courage
to speak when injustice prevails,
then what exactly have we been freed from?
Perhaps we broke the chains
only to learn how to wear new ones.
Perhaps we became ok with this new type of confinement.
Perhaps
we never understood
what independence really meant.
