What does being “free” mean to you? 

For me, at the moment, “free” means all the free munchies that one can get while breezing through your local warehouse club. 

It also represents all the free lunch drawings that restaurants offer if you just put your business card in their little fish bowl thingy.  Incidentally, do ninety percent of us really have any other use for our business cards?  Just asking.

On a slightly more serious note, “free” tends to be not what we get but what we hope to be.  Think about it for just a moment (it won’t cost you a thing).  When we baby boomers were in our teens, we yearned for that magical age of 16 at which time we would get our drivers license and then we thought we would be truly free.  We would then be able to run around with our friends.  The ultimate coolness of it all would be that the guys would finally be able to take their girlfriends out on dates . . . . on their own.

But wait.  Getting that drivers license meant that we would want our own set of wheels which meant we needed to get a job (unless your parents robbed you of that blessing and provided one for you).  A job meant working the schedule our bosses posted for us. 

For me, it meant working until 9:15pm on Friday nights at the now-closed Sun Maid Grocery in Peoria, Arizona.  That meant that I would show up to the school dances rather late.  It also severely limited the number of girls I could date.  What father would look kindly on some long haired teenage boy picking up their daughter at ten o’clock to BEGIN a date?  You get the point.

The next age marker of our alleged freedom was eighteen.  Alice Cooper said that eighteen is like having “a baby’s brain and an old man’s heart.”  We schemed to move out from under the “oppressive” thumb of our parents and out on our own.  Most of us either went to college, moved into our own apartment, joined the military, or got married.  In any event, we saw any of those options as finally being free.

We soon found that, regardless which of those plans we pursued, our new found freedom came with a whole new set of constraints.  Some of us could relate to the line in Kris Kristofferson’s song, “Me and Bobbie McGee”, where he said that “freedom’s just another word for nothing else to lose”.  Whichever path we chose, we soon learned that freedom isn’t free.  It costs us something else in return. 

As we are reaching the empty nest period of our lives, and even on in to retirement, we are looking forward to that next level of freedom.  No job. No schedule. No . . . you get the point.  But something tells me, though, that we will face new restrictions to that freedom in the form of budgets as well as special events in our kids and grandkids lives.  For many of us, our freedom will be hampered with health issues.

Personally, I believe that, among other things, freedom is the ability to take today and enjoy it every way that we can.  Breathe in the air.  Smell the roses.  Enjoy the rain.  Enjoy time with your spouse.  Sit at a mall or Starbucks and people watch. 

Another angle can be to try pursuits that you haven’t yet tried in your life.  In recent years, my first wife and I have started attempting to climb out of some of the ruts in our lives and try new things (to us) like Broadway shows, visiting art museums, and attending more concerts.  No, we aren’t trying to be uppity.  We just want to enjoy new experiences. 

You may already do those things so try something else. To paraphrase a line from that famous Seventies commercial: “Try it!  You might like it!”

If you’re have trouble coming up with something new to do, you could go to your local warehouse club and see what kind of free munchies they have today (try the samples deep-fried limburger and garlic cheese-k-bob.  You’ll experience solitude like you never have).