Freedom Isn't Free

Before this week, I'd never really looked at the world around me. I'd never thought about how lucky I am to live in such an awesome nation with so many people who love and support me. I'd never thought about how lucky I was to be free, to live my life the way I want to without having to be told what rights I have or don't have.

Before this week, I'd never thought about our flag, what was coming out of my mouth besides a memorized poem when I said the pledge of allegiance, or even why I was reciting it.

I'd never thought anything about the past, about war, about the world being any less perfect than I'd like it to be. But that all changed after I talked to people who shared their experiences of war and the imperfect world that we really live in.

One man told us of Pearl Harbor and what it was like to watch all those ships explode before his eyes. He told us the WWII battle that saved the world and he told us about the young boys he saw, losing their lives as they walked off their ships, never even getting the chance to set foot on foreign ground.

Another man told us of the long, lonely days he spent waiting for his "freedom bird" to go home.

And another told us of a terrible experiment with fruit flies that could become our reality if we don't change the world soon.

Listening to the stories of these people who experienced a reality I can't possibly even try to picture, totally made me think again about what was important in my life.

I listened to each and every person tell me about how they watched their best friend die or how they had to face the reality that they may never go home, they may never be able to see their families again. It made me realize how important life is to these people and how important it should be to me. What if they never got home? What if they lay injured staring into their best friend's eyes one last time? They saw people like this everyday. How they survived that, I can only imagine.

While fighting for their own lives, their only command was to take away as many others as they could. To me, it's all just a story; just something made up in the author's mind because it's something that doesn't seem real to me. I can't understand what it could ever be like, carrying a loaded weapon, your only goal being to destroy human kind.

The WWII veterans I spoke to both talked about the atomic bombs. I heard one story about an experiment on fruit flies and it made realize how dangerous these things really were, and what would happen if they were ever used again.

There was an experiment done where fruit flies were exposed to extreme radiation, similar to the effects of an atomic bomb. These fruit flies offspring were perfectly normal, and their offspring were normal also, and so was the next generation. But by the 4th generation flies were being born without wings or eyes, or without abdomens, or legs. These flies were just mangled.

As I listened to this story, my mind began to wander, and I thought of how this story could be true with humans. If another atomic bomb were to be used, in 4 generations the children of the world could be born just like those fruit flies without eyes or legs or maybe even without ears. I tried to picture what terrible thing could possibly do that to the world, and even though I could never paint that picture in my mind, I knew that this man saw the picture like a photograph. He knew exactly what kind of destroying machine we were talking about. He had experienced it all.

From these people I've learned that life isn't a toy. Your only guarantee is that you'll live and you'll die. You may not live as long as others and you may not get that second chance. You may never again be able to say "I'm sorry"; you may never be able to say I love you; and for the people who served our nation, knowing that, I watch in absolute awe knowing that I could never do that. And for the people who died, knowing when they left, that they may never go home, they may have already said good bye to their parents for the last time, I can only stare in disbelief.

I've really realized how much we all take our freedom for granted. There are so many people out there who gave up so much, and some of them who even gave up their lives so we could have that freedom. People who gave up everything so I could worship the God I want to, so I can say what I want, so I can stand up for what I believe in, and so I can be treated as an equal. These people are too often forgotten when really, they should be the people who we think about and thank God for, because these people understand that freedom isn't free.