It is a beautiful vintage car, Grandpa used to brag about. There was something special about it, but you never quite understood its meaning or what it truly represented or meant to your grandpa and ultimately your family.
He drove it in the snow to take your grandmother to the hospital when she was having their first child. It was his livelihood at one time, it was there through sickness and health, from the small apartment they rented to their first home-it was his pride and joy, something worth fighting for.
Today, it seems freedom is the ability to do whatever one wants without consequence. A license to make bad decisions without damage. “Your ideas, your music, your activity offends me, I have the freedom from having to be exposed to what upsets me”-that’s not freedom, that’s being self-centered.
Freedom is actually a dangerous idea, no handout nor safety net is attached. It is the ability to make your own decisions about your own life at the danger of being wrong, of making mistakes, of falling down.
It is one’s power to forge a life for themselves and their families without the fear of government intervention.
Being coddled and pampered starts out as a kind concept until your destiny is governed by someone else’s judgement instead of your own. Freedom is something we all need to live along side, it takes patience and concern for other’s freedoms as much as our own.
If we look for intervention, there will always be someone to intervene. A good example is two children fighting over a toy. They are children, they are learning the idea of compromise, of sharing, of living with each other. If they go to the parents and ask for intervention, many times both will lose the toy but more importantly the ability to decide on their own. The ability to compromise, to work together, to give and take is something that takes experience and awkward mistakes.
No one will come to you and say I’m taking your freedom away….they will say I want to help you. At first it is a kind gesture until you realize you are a project of theirs and that’s where freedom erodes.
I love Granpa’s old car, I think we all need to learn about the people around the world who’ve fought and died for freedom and continue to. These days so much words are thrown around, so many agendas are in play, we all need to go back to the basics of our own freedoms and realize what makes us free, and we will realize what is so worth not losing.
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