Independence Day

I'm not a hugely patriotic person, and I could go off on the current state of the nation, and whether or not we're currently fulfilling the ideals of the Founding Parents, but then I'd be certain to offend someone, and that would be baaaaaad, because with my luck, it would be the person just about to buy my book, and I'd lose a reader. Plus, the Goddesses almost certainly have international readers. So I won't go there.

Instead, I'm going to write about freedom. In a couple stories I've got floating around in my head, at least one of the main characters is searching for freedom. One is a runaway slave escaping to a neighboring country (where slavery is outlawed). Another was a prisoner for years. Both of them want the same thing we all desire: to live their own lives, determine their own destinies.

But can anyone really do that? Are any of us really and truly free? Most of us have to work for a living, and if we're independently wealthy (not me), then we're dependent on that wealth. We're tied up by obligations to society, family, friends, fate. What about animals? Aren't they free? Consider fish. Exactly. Pretty much stuck with the H2O.

But many of the things that keep us from being truly free we can shed: addictions, keeping up with the Joneses, the drive for weath, unhealthy relationships.

Those other obligations I mentioned before--family, friends, even work--these are good things. The kite string that keeps us from being swept away by more harmful prisons.

On this Independence Day, celebrate with your family and friends. Enjoy the day off from work. And write your own Declaration of Independence from the harmful things keeping you from freedom. And find some fireworks tonight.