III

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Do you ever wonder who you are? Or do you say with ease you’re Petra, or Sabrina, or John? I am not the name that was given to me, then promptly stolen in the name of commerce. The Whore of Babylon, as it is known.

Humans live commercial lives from birth to “death,” as you call it. The word sounds so final, fear inducing even when, in reality, it is far less traumatic an event than birth is.

Everything in this reality is about commerce. You are born, and your mother is charged a phenomenal amount of money that only exists as an electron, but when you owe it, it becomes very, very real. Next, your parents give up all rights and responsibility by registering your birth. Next come the “well-baby” visits, during which your humanity is stolen. You are roughly handled, weighed, poked, probed, then handed back to your mother, who perhaps feels uneasy now because something deep inside of her begins to stir; she knows something is not right, yet has neither the knowledge nor the courage to accept that something is indeed wrong.

You spend your life chasing after possessions, become obsessed with having the bigger TV, the better car, the more modern gadgets than your neighbour, attending the better college to gain knowledge. Or rather what you think knowledge is. Indoctrination never leads to true knowledge, but you don’t know that because this is the life you were born into, and you simply continue on the path your environment laid out for you.

Except, times are changing. More and more often, you ask yourself if your life is what life should be about. More and more often, you slip into moments of increasing awareness that not all is visible. That there is more to life.

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