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We can invent assemblies of silence, in squares, in courtyards, in rooms without wi-fi:
we sit side by side and stay quiet until our breath becomes words.
We can call a truce on notifications, an hour when no one replies, no one scrolls, no one judges:
only intertwined hands and unguarded glances.
We can write letters by hand, address them to strangers,
reveal a secret, a doubt, a dream, knowing that paper endures longer than a like.
We can set up “attention stalls,” where the price of admission is listening without interrupting,
where every word carries the weight of a gesture, and no one leaves until they’ve made room for another.
We can read stolen poems aloud, then debate them as if they were a secret theorem,
acknowledging that beauty unites more than any algorithm.
We can take turns turning off our screens: each of us powers down in turn,
to remember what it’s like to watch the horizon without the frame of a glowing rectangle.
We can forge a pact of honesty, where whoever errs admits “I got distracted”…
and whoever listens replies “I understand.”
We can reclaim boredom, that long pause between one gesture and the next,
where ideas bloom and the unexpected takes shape.
We can revive parties without hashtags,
where “present” isn’t a click but a smile that crosses the room.
Thus, step by step, in every small act of resistance,
we rekindle the frequency of the human and silence the echo of the algorithm.