Regrets.

We ran, didn’t we?

Ran far away from being children, chased adulthood like it was some prize—

fast race, fast reward, right?

But what did we find at the end of it all?

A reward that shatters bones, breaks you down,

leaves you more fragile than the child you once were.

The child you ignored, pushed aside,

abandoned in the name of development.

___

I’ve left behind what my hand first learned to do.

Pen and paper, the simple act of reading, writing.

I followed what others told me, forsaking what I knew,

what felt like home…..

___

Now, technology runs in our veins, our core, our gift, our curse.

I wonder who I would have been without all this—

would I have been like the people of old,

when writing was noble, wisdom was sought in books, not screens?

I fear wisdom is slipping away from us,

replaced by the hunger for money, the lure of shortcuts.

___

No one explores their mind anymore;

we’ve outsourced that too, let the machines do it for us.

____

But these cunning men seek to hoard it,

guarding wisdom like treasure,

while offering up easier methods to the masses,

easier ways to know,

to make it seem like they’ve leveled the playing field.

But they haven’t….

They dominate over those who’ve forgotten how to think for themselves,

who’ve lost the will to explore their minds—

content with the surface,

unaware of the depths they’ve abandoned.

Potential withers, wasted, unused.

___

I want to return to the roots, to the basics.

I seek progress, but not at the expense of losing myself.

I wish to read, to write, to explore my mind as I did when I was five,

when the world was new, when I was strong.

We’re moving too fast, but to where?

To empty graveyards, filled with the echoes of what we might have been, if only we hadn’t been in such a hurry.