What is Freedom Like?

I can remember back to when I was 15. I think it was like 100 years ago, but I can remember when I had my first sailplane or glider ride at Wurtsboro airport in NY. My pilot was a pilot from WW2 who had learned to soar in the 1930s. He had learned to fly gliders because at the time Germany was not allowed to have an air force and had to find ways to train without publicly violating the armistice. He told me he had flown Me 109 fighters in the war, but afterwards had moved to America. I didn't ask if he had shot down any Americans.

Anyway, we took off and were towed to three thousand feet where we released the tow line to begin our glide back to the airport. Almost immediately we felt a thermal buffet our wing and we rolled into it to try and gain lift. I remember looking off the wing and there was a red-tailed hawk circling with us. That is my very first experience in flying and it created, for me, a complete and total release from all the demands of life as well as a sense of freedom. For one brief instant the hawk and I were in harmony, each controlling its own fate, and neither afraid of the other. We were in his element and focused on the challenge at hand.

That moment has always been for me an inspirational one. It taught me that if you were free you controlled your destiny, you were responsible for the choices you made, you could soar or you could crash it all depended on how you controlled yourself, your emotions, and your environment. If you look to others to solve your problems for you, if you look to others to shape your world, or you expect to have handed to you the gifts that surround us you will never be free.

Each of us must come up with our own definition of freedom, and in turn what we are willing to sacrifice for it. For me, that one instant in time has served to shape my life, and the choices I have made. I hope you are as lucky as I was.