Chains of freedom

They say that we're 'free' which seems strange to me, free to work and pay taxes, spending all our limited healthy years working in jobs we tolerate for the coppers they provide,

Free to state our opinions unless it offends someone that doesn't share the same views, yet in different locations those opinions are persecuted without acceptance of choice or point of view.

free to love yet bound by structural relationship rules or contractual obligations. Free to have children to continually populate the workforce or to love and raise at the expense of who financially and emotionally? Yet legally forced through a states education system.

Free to live in poverty or chase the dream of wealth and all the apparent promise that brings, as the falseness of media projection, contributing to the deepening pandemic of poor mental health in society.

Images of the perfect body and life where a 'get rich and famous quick' culture has infected even the most innocent.

Socials dictating once free minds occupying thought, processing with intent to blindfold what's before the eyes.

Free to walk through this beautiful planet as long as the correct paperwork is paid for and presented, each of these countries maybe entered.

Free to die, however, not by our own hand as that is a crime according to law, yet free to pay inheritance taxes galore.

Is freedom real or ideal we crave asks the person who feels a slave.