Freedom
I look around at the appliances in the room. I wonder about the people that made them. The hours they worked for the amount they got paid. About their faces, who they are, their families.
I think about my friends just a few miles away in Mexico. I think about Gloria every night when I lay down to sleep in my comfortable bed, in my heated home, exhausted from a hard days work. I think about Gloria as she is standing at the factory working through the night as I lay my head down. I think about her standing outside and waiting for the bus in the cold. And I think about her exhausting 12 hr day of assembling pieces in a factory to make almost nothing as I lament over mine of doing things I love with my friends and getting the privilege of using my life to bring God glory.
I think about freedom, and college and being asked when I was 7 what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think about applying for the Air Force Academy at 18 and the heaps of college applications that came to my house. I think about the decisions I've made, the freedoms I've had and what's been handed to me. Like my entire education because I made good grades and knew how to hit a tennis ball. Because of that, I was granted the freedoms to be asked and to answer, "what do you want to do when you grow up?" It gives me the freedom to ask that same question now.
I think about this strange universe that we live in, different than all the other worlds around us. As though we are our own planet and our only example is ourselves, which can be a deadly one. And I think of how we use these freedoms we've been given. The freedom of education, of asking "what" you want to do, the freedom of options and hope and possibility. And then I look outside. I see our fancy cars and our houses. I see my own. And I see our streets filled with us driving to and fro around our little bubble until we have no where left to go.
And that's it. All this freedom. All this possibility. We have no idea what we hold in our hands because we have never known anything less. We have no idea what our lives could do if we looked around us; outside of us. I have no idea.
I think about my friends just a few miles away in Mexico. I think about Gloria every night when I lay down to sleep in my comfortable bed, in my heated home, exhausted from a hard days work. I think about Gloria as she is standing at the factory working through the night as I lay my head down. I think about her standing outside and waiting for the bus in the cold. And I think about her exhausting 12 hr day of assembling pieces in a factory to make almost nothing as I lament over mine of doing things I love with my friends and getting the privilege of using my life to bring God glory.
I think about freedom, and college and being asked when I was 7 what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think about applying for the Air Force Academy at 18 and the heaps of college applications that came to my house. I think about the decisions I've made, the freedoms I've had and what's been handed to me. Like my entire education because I made good grades and knew how to hit a tennis ball. Because of that, I was granted the freedoms to be asked and to answer, "what do you want to do when you grow up?" It gives me the freedom to ask that same question now.
I think about this strange universe that we live in, different than all the other worlds around us. As though we are our own planet and our only example is ourselves, which can be a deadly one. And I think of how we use these freedoms we've been given. The freedom of education, of asking "what" you want to do, the freedom of options and hope and possibility. And then I look outside. I see our fancy cars and our houses. I see my own. And I see our streets filled with us driving to and fro around our little bubble until we have no where left to go.
And that's it. All this freedom. All this possibility. We have no idea what we hold in our hands because we have never known anything less. We have no idea what our lives could do if we looked around us; outside of us. I have no idea.
Comments