What does it mean to be free?

I was wondering, what does it mean to be free?

Eveybody has their own definition of freedom. You can be in prison and feel free or you can be free of every responsabilities and struggles and feel like choking. Well, let me try to figure mine. If I refer to what is it to be settled down, have responsabilities, a family, a career, depts of all kinds, of stuff you think you need but you don't, morgages of this and that, well, that seems pretty much a big freakin' prison for me. For somebody else, this might be the big deal of their life, what they forever wanted, a big wedding, 12 kids screaming for more toys and crying and crawling for the new version of a video game, the big pool in the backyard of their big house in the subburbs, this might be their freedom, what do I know? All I know is that it is freedom of choice, freedom of happiness, well in our position in society and in the world I live in anyways. I remember seeing a poor homeless orphan dying of hunger in India and I am pretty sure his choice of freedom is different than ours.

I am lucky. Lucky to be born in this side of the world, to have a Canadian passport, to have parents who gave me a roof, all the food I ever wanted, toys, blankets, coats, televisions, music, a computer to type my reflexions on freedom (thanks Papa), I am so freakin' lucky, blessed, spoiled. And I do have the choice, lucky to have the choice to not want this anymore. That's real freedom.

So, to whoever tells me again how lucky I am to be able to make this life of vagabond roaming the world, well, my answer might be less condescendant.  I used to answer that I made choices and we all have choices, that it wasn't luck. Maybe now I will answer '' Yes, I am bloody lucky to be able to make that choice''.

Kiki :)