What is freedom? What does that word truly mean? Have you ever just taken a moment out of your day to stop and really think about the meaning of freedom? There is an official definition for it, but I believe that this word means more than some words printed on paper.

I was recently faced with the question, “What does freedom mean to you?” In all honesty, I haven’t really taken a moment to stop and think about it before. What does freedom mean to me? I’ve heard the word since I was little and I hear the word all the time today. We are all living in a free country, but just knowing the facts doesn’t mean I fully grasp the concept of what freedom is. I believe that freedom has a different meaning to each individual. Freedom could be an idea, or it could be something greater. It could be something more powerful than any other power known to mankind or it could be something that we just aren’t capable of explaining. I believe that freedom is all of this and much more!

I believe that freedom allows me to pray and worship to the One and Only, God. Freedom allows me to make my own decisions and experience failure during that time. Freedom allows me to be free from any worries or problems that I have. It frees everybody from things that are chaining us down in life. It gives everybody a chance to start over with things they’ve made mistakes with in their life and live a better lifestyle than before. With freedom, we have the power of knowing that you can believe in whatever you want without having to worry about what others think.

Having freedom also means we have a responsibility of maintaining a sense of freedom in our lives. We all have a way and a feeling of how we want to approach our lives and in order for us to go about doing that, we have to focus on surrendering more and controlling less. I believe that freedom is always there and an option for people to take; the thing holding some people back is if they choose to plug into it and really go for it.

I believe that freedom is a choice. Freedom can be coaxed along and it’s welcomed into our lives when we love, accept, and respect everybody else in our lives. We cannot give what we do not have. I feel that a sense of freedom is taken away when we push past the feeling to stop and slow down as well as when we judge other people. When we judge others, we are trying to box them in and label them, but really all we are doing is boxing and labeling ourselves in.

To wrap it up, freedom is really important to me because once we give ourselves permission to be free, we are able to open up our hearts and accept what really is. We are able to feel like we are being guided along and we can have that adventure. We are able to make mistakes in our life in order to learn more about life. Freedom is accepting what really is important in life and embracing every moment that happens.