Rouge, Blanc et Bleu; a thought on personal freedoms

 

I love this country.

We have the freedom to make choices, no matter how silly, so that you can become individual in mind, spirit, thought, and deed.

You don’t have to be like anyone else.

You can live in a community of purpose or you can be a community of one.

Speaking your mind with no more consequence than the tsk-tsking of your mother.

You can develop mad passions for the most obscure.

Like the Tour de France.

This is what the Fourth of July means to my husband and me…besides the fireworks, a good cookout, and homemade peach ice cream.

That you can enjoy a custom of your own making and the culture of another country entirely.

An exercise in a personal freedom.

With impunity.

You can choose how to live.

Simply. Well. Graciously. Generously. Carefully. Crazily.

You can grow tomatoes.  Or not.

There are consequences, surely, to all that we do.  And you may well be judged by what you say, think, write…and by what bike races you like to watch.

But it will be within the community of our making in which laws do not allow for loss of life nor property for these things…the saying, thinking, and writing…and bike race watching.

You can thank your favorite veteran for a lot of this (so should the French).

This is easy for me, I’m married to one.

Because of men and women like him, we can rise early in the morning and watch an American win the third stage in the Tour de France…have a glass of champagne to celebrate…

…this Fourth of July.

 

God Bless America.

And…Vive la Tour!