Harsh, neon and fluorescent lights surround my eyesights to almost a blinding extent.

The atmosphere is harsh and bone-chillingly cold, floors furnished like a 5-star hotel, almost as if it was preserving something dead or dying. I brave through it, because however harsh the cold inside appears to be, it appeals much more than another day spent outside the cold of the streets ridden with despair.

Endless beams scatter back and forth like meteor showers. This isn’t a party, nor is this a place exclusive to the elite. On the contrary, it’s a place of hope for people like us, a place of patience, and also a place where dreams come crashing to the ground catastrophically.

My muscle memory leads me to walk to a machine– the same machine I’ve seen for what seems like a lifetime. Its edges are familiar, its mechanized manipulation and architecture almost like a longstanding friend of mine. I teem closer to it and, strange enough, an uneasy feeling of comfort rids of me any fears or doubts of the outside world.

The numbers flash on the screen.

7. 0. 0. I try again.

0.7. 7. Just one number off.

7.0.7.

7.7…….

The 3rd slot glimmers, and for a split second, I could see something different. Within each and every slot machine is the promise of a life free of struggle, of corruption, and of exploitation. This slot machine held more than money. In fact, it held the promises of politicians and reformists long ago of a better future.

The final number reveals itself. 0.

I didn’t win.

But where other people run away and condemn, I see something else: a possible escape from what life has dealt me.

It’s easy to point and laugh. But when I gamble, I don’t feel a rush of excitement or a wave of euphoria. Instead, I see a life without the endless constraints of poverty. No longer will I have to squeeze between smoke ridden streets to get to work. No more suffering from floods, heatwaves, and economic crises. I could simply sit in my high-rise apartment, looking above the uneven and bumpy roads, separated from lower society, unaware of the problems of the people. I could be ignorant, stupid, even lazy, and the system would still be on my side. Money gives me that privilege.

People call me a slave. Weak-willed, manipulable, I’ve heard it all. But through my own eyes, I see myself as a dreamer, a fighter, even a revolutionary. I gamble because I could not fathom the thought of losing hope in a hopeless world, of giving up. It represents to me a silent revolution against my circumstances, a modernist struggle against a riven society. Giving up that hope means giving up my resistance, fitting in with the crowd of retired dreamers.

And though I may dig a deeper and deeper grave for myself, the act of this hopefully broken defiance elicits within me a fighting spirit to carry through the most run-down streets and alleyways of the world.

And so I gamble.

7.0.7.

Still, I didn’t win. But as long as the machine spins again, my silent resistance carries on.

Amaro B. Lanuza Jr,

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