Layout by: Mark Louie Pocot
Published by: Jadelynn Arnigo
Date Published: October 6, 2025
Time Published: 1:35 PM
Category: Prose
Theme: Social injustice and the burden of inequality
Every day, ordinary people carry the weight of choices they never made. The mother who skips meals so her children can eat. The student who studies by candlelight because electricity is a luxury. The worker who wakes before dawn and returns home long after dark, too tired to rest yet unable to stop. Their sacrifices are quiet, invisible, yet they form the backbone of a society that has long mistaken survival for progress.
But beneath their silence lies a weariness too heavy to ignore.
The driver says, “I spend twelve hours on the road, yet my pockets are empty before the week even begins.”
The farmer confesses, “I work the soil from sunrise to dusk, but the rice I grow is too costly for my own table.”
The nurse whispers, “I heal strangers in faraway lands, yet my own country tells me I am worth less.”
Their words reveal what the powerful often choose to forget—that the burden of sacrifice falls hardest on those already carrying too much.
Still, they endure. The driver returns to the road, the farmer rises with the dawn, the nurse continues to serve. They do not give because life is kind; they give because love for family is greater than despair. Sacrifice has become their unspoken language, their only means of survival in a world that takes without giving back.
Yet, one cannot ignore the truth: this weight will eventually shatter the very people who hold society together. Patience will break, and silence will grow teeth. A nation that thrives on sacrifice without justice builds its foundation on borrowed time, for no people can be expected to bleed forever without demanding to be heard.
And so the question remains: how long can a people bleed quietly before the silence turns into a cry? How many more sacrifices will be demanded before those in power finally learn that true leadership is not measured by what the people can endure, but by what burdens they are finally freed from?
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