Freedom To

Reflecting on a person's life is a daunting task. It doesn't matter how long a person lives.The time between the day of birth and the day of death is the time we have to develop our story. There is no telling how long we have. In a week's time I lost my 91 year old mother and I watched as a family grieved the loss of their two year old child. Ninety-one years is a long time and in that lifetime many chapters of a story are written. Two years is a short period of time but long enough to have a story and to make an impact on people.

It seems contrite and obvious to say each day is a precious gift. It seems foolish to realize how often we go through our day by day routines not remembering this one simple thing.  We know it we just don't always remember. These are the times we are reminded. Reminded that our story is being written every moment of every day.

Last month I heard an interview with Desmond Tutu where he spoke of freedom. He said that people have a tendency to look at life with a "Freedom From" mentality. He went on to say it is more productive to look at life with a "Freedom To" outlook. This struck a chord with me. In our lives we are blessed with the freedom to do just about anything and at anytime we can change our course. We have the power to write our story. We decide the impact we want to make in our lifetimes. We are given the gift every day to make decisions, some simple and some hard. We are given the freedom to move forward, to work towards something, to try something new or to keep doing what we love. We are given the freedom to take the bad things in our lives and make them good, to fight for what we know to be right and to have the courage to help people along the way. We have the freedom to move forward everyday, to release our fears, our animosities, our prejudices, our hate and to stand up for what we believe to be true, to be fair, to be just.

We have the freedom to write our story.

Magda