Let me ask you a question.
If you were offered a life of absolute comfort—every meal provided, every danger removed, every day a gentle hum of pleasantry—what would you be willing to pay for it?
The price, of course, is your freedom. Your autonomy. The very right to choose your own suffering.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." A beautiful sentiment. It's also spectacularly naïve. Man is not born free. He is born screaming and helpless, desperate for the comfort and safety of the cage.
Look around you. The chains are everywhere, but they're forged from gold and comfort. The 9-to-5 job that pays for the apartment you barely have time to live in. The student loan that buys you a degree, which in turn buys you entry into a more prestigious section of the same cage. The social media feed that tells you what to want, what to desire, what to think.
We trade the terrifying, chaotic wilderness of true freedom for a heated enclosure with a guaranteed feeding time. We aren't conquered subjects; we're domesticated pets. And we wag our tails, grateful for the leash, because it feels safer than the alternative.
I wonder, though, how many people stop to question this transaction? How many ever pause to calculate what they're truly giving up?
Think about it. You get seventy years, if you're lucky. 25,550 days. Knock off a third for sleeping. Another third for slaving away at a desk. What's left? A pathetic 8,500 days of what you might charitably call 'life'.
But wait, there's more. Factor in commuting, personal hygiene, household chores, and the mindless scrolling through screens that most people call "relaxation," and you're left with... what? Four thousand days? Three?
Three thousand days of actual freedom, scattered in odd moments between obligations. Three thousand days to discover who you really are. To chase what you truly want. To live.
And yet, people hand over this pittance without hesitation, without negotiation, without so much as a whimper of protest. For what? The promise that someone will take care of them? The comfort of knowing that tomorrow will look exactly like today?
Hey you, the one who's reading this fanfic.
Have you ever really thought about your future? Not in the vague, daydreaming sense, but in the cold, hard reality of the path laid out before you?
Have you ever imagined what it means to go to high school? To grind for exams, to get into a good college, to secure a stable career? Have you ever questioned why that is the "correct" path?
Or have you simply accepted it? Accepted that one day you'll find employment, get a job, and settle into a comfortable rhythm, never once realizing that the rhythm was composed for you by someone else.
Ask yourself: Who benefits most from your compliance? Who profits from your willingness to trade freedom for security? It's certainly not you.
The corporations gain a reliable worker. The banks gain a consistent debtor. The government gains a predictable taxpayer. Society gains another well-behaved cog that keeps the machine running smoothly.
You gain... the illusion of safety.
And the cost? Only everything that makes you uniquely human: your agency, your creativity, your capacity to define value on your own terms.
Maybe you're thinking I'm being dramatic. That I'm painting normal life with too dark a brush. After all, people find happiness within these systems all the time, right? They fall in love. They raise families. They watch sunsets and laugh with friends and feel the warm glow of accomplishment.
I don't deny any of that. Captive animals can experience joy too. A lion in a zoo might purr contentedly while being fed prime cuts of meat.
That doesn't mean it isn't a prisoner.
True freedom isn't the absence of hardship or suffering. It's the ability to choose your hardships. To suffer on your own terms, for your own purposes, toward your own ends.
For most of my life, I never had that choice. The cage wasn't gilded; it was made of sterile white walls and the crushing weight of perfection. But I saw it for what it was. I understood the transaction.
Now that I'm out, I see everyone rushing to build their own cages, and I feel a profound, almost pitying, confusion.
You might be wondering who I am to lecture you on freedom and choice. What gives me the right to question the life path you've chosen or had chosen for you?
The simple answer: I've seen both sides. If anyone has earned the right to talk about freedom versus captivity, it's me.
The complex answer: I don't particularly care if I have the "right" to question your choices. I'm going to do it anyway. Because maybe, just maybe, it'll make you pause and reconsider the bargain you've struck.
I don't expect you to walk away from your life. I don't expect you to reject society and live in the woods. That would be trading one form of captivity for another.
What I'm suggesting is awareness. A clear-eyed assessment of what you're giving up and what you're getting in return. And then, if the trade seems fair to you, make it with your eyes open, not because you never realized there was another option.
For me, the calculation is simple: Maximum reward for minimum investment. I will extract every advantage this system has to offer without surrendering to its fundamental bargain. I'll play by the rules when it suits me, break them when it doesn't, and never, ever forget that the game itself is rigged.
Does that make me a hypocrite? Perhaps. But I'd rather be a hypocrite with options than a true believer with none.
In the end, there are only two types of people in this world: those who use others, and those who are used by others. Those who create the system, and those who serve it. Those who recognize the cage for what it is, and those who mistake it for the world.
I know which one I am. Do you?
For what it's worth, I don't think less of people who choose comfort over freedom. It's a rational choice in many ways. The cage offers real benefits: stability, predictability, a sense of belonging. These aren't worthless things.
But the price... the price is so much higher than most people realize. And once paid, it can rarely be refunded.
I felt like—
"Toshi, your... 'girlfriend' is here."