Understanding Freedom

This morning I awoke to the moderately annoying buzz of my digital alarm clock, I can’t even tell you who makes it, but that’s okay, those that made it couldn’t tell me from a hole in the wall either. But that’s neither here nor there. So, after hitting the snooze a couple of times I sleepily crawled from my bed to make a delicious cup of coffee for me and my baby, to be honest she started it, I just poured the boiling water. As she got ready for work I added the cream and sugar to our travel mugs and came back to our room. After a few moments and a couple of sips I went to the car, started it, allowing it to warm up so that when she emerged the cool chill of the early spring morning would not reach her bones. So I drove her to work and returned home, turned on the TV and enjoyed more coffee. This sounds like a million peoples day, normal by collective agreement.

But why?

Freedom: The choice to decide the course of my own actions. The ability and right to choose and what is the price of my freedom and ostensibly yours as well – Nothing! My freedom and yours comes at what price, the purchase of an alarm clock, coffee or a car – No we, from the comfort of our homes are writing cheques from accounts that were put in our trust. Our freedom shows completely that we are trust fund babies with silver spoons in our mouths. That’s right, trust fund babies with no regard for the actual price of things – especially freedom.

In North America and indeed all places where the liberty bell of freedom rings we enjoy benefits we ourselves didn’t earn. Perhaps our parents or grandparents, cut from a different cloth, truly earned their freedom and it did have a price – A large one.

World War II blatantly exposed the horrible possibilities of power unchecked and unopposed. It opened the eyes of generations to the brutal inhuman potential of angry evil men. Yet in spite of this my freedom and yours too was won on battlefields where blood was like a tsunami and bodies were stacked hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, anonymously to rid the world of sheer terror. Oh, my freedom certainly came at a price, but not mine, or yours, save the loss of loved ones that we never knew.

So as you enjoy the full and wonderful benefits of freedom take account of your actions to ensure that those that gave their lives so we could have ours – paid the ultimate price – did not, did not write a cheque that will bounce because of our attitudinal laxity toward freedom.

SDM