THE TAXI RIDE
By AI-ChatGPT4-T.Chr.- Human. Synthesis-15 October 2025
It began as nothing special, just another taxi ride through the restless veins of the city. The traffic hummed its usual chaos, and I expected silence or small talk. Instead, the driver began to speak — and from that moment, the car became a moving confessional of the times we live in.
He was a Presbyterian, a man with a thoughtful calm about him, eyes sharpened by observation. I, on the other hand, a self-confessed witch of the modern kind — guided by intuition, nature, and the invisible threads of energy that weave through life.
Two different paths, yet our thoughts aligned perfectly. It was as if, for a short while, the universe had put us together to agree on one painful truth: the world has gone mad.
We spoke of violence first. Of how it now lurks behind every corner and how even joy feels tainted with risk. We laughed, though bitterly, about how one thinks twice before eating a slice of cake or sipping a caipirinha, afraid of poison or spite. We miss the days when the streets felt safe, when trust wasn’t a form of foolishness, and when fear hadn’t become a second skin.
From there, the conversation flowed naturally to politics — the grand circus of shame. How everything once upright now seems inverted. Words like democracy, justice, and truth have become empty slogans repeated by faces that lie without blinking. The rich justify greed as “progress,” while the poor carry the burden of survival.
And the people, lost between anger and fatigue, keep scrolling, shouting, forgetting. We both knew the sickness wasn’t just corruption, but confusion — a global fog of deception where nothing is what it seems, and everything depends on who manipulates the story better.
The driver sighed. “Sometimes I think the world has lost its mind.”I looked at him and said, “Not lost — traded it.”He smiled, sadly. We both knew it was true. Humanity has traded wisdom for speed, truth for comfort, and community for noise. The wise are ignored, the loud are rewarded, and cruelty has become entertainment. We live surrounded by information and starving for meaning.
Outside the window, the city rolled past like a film we’d already seen too many times — cracked walls, neon lights, faces that looked tired even when smiling. I told him I missed the 1980s. Not because they were perfect, but because they still felt human.
People met in person, music had soul, laughter wasn’t ironic, and we believed that change was possible. Even hope felt easier then, like an instinct we hadn’t yet unlearned.
Now everything feels exaggerated — louder, faster, emptier. We no longer live; we perform. The world has become a stage where truth is edited, feelings are filtered, and empathy is out of fashion. We agreed that the worst part isn’t just what’s happening — it’s how easily people accept it. The light turned red, and for a brief pause, the chaos outside seemed to hold its breath.
He looked at me through the mirror. “Do you think it will ever change?”
I thought for a moment before answering. “It has to. But it won’t come from governments or headlines. It’ll come from people like you — from the ones who still care enough to notice the madness.”
Change will begin when we start valuing decency again. When being kind stops feeling like weakness. When we stop fearing honesty and start fearing indifference instead. It will come when people realize that moral exhaustion is not normal — that life is not supposed to feel like surviving a storm every day.
We drove the last few minutes in a comfortable silence. Outside, the sun was falling softly over the city, painting even the ruins with a kind of grace.
When he stopped the car, he turned and said, “God bless you.”
I smiled and answered, “And may the old spirits guard your road.”
Two strangers, two beliefs, one truth. The world is a bit of a pain in the ass — but even within the madness, there are still sparks of humanity trying to keep the flame alive.
I walked away thinking that maybe what we miss isn’t just the safety of the old days — it’s the sanity of them. The quiet decency. The sense that life, though imperfect, still made sense. We are long overdue for a great awakening — not political, not ideological, but spiritual.
A remembering of who we were before greed and fear became our language. The world is aching for that kind of healing. And perhaps, like all miracles, it will begin quietly, in a taxi, between two souls who still dare to hope that reason and kindness might one day return home.
Source — Cristiane Neves
