Freedom
I grew up in the USA. Believe me, I have an idea of what freedom means. At least I thought I did, until I came to Europe. Then I began to miss a lot of the freedoms I had always taken for granted, like the freedom to drive a car; the freedom to go grocery shopping at any hour of the day or night; the freedom to leave the country or get married; the freedom to work where I want. And then I understood even more what freedom means.
I lost most of these freedoms only temporarily - and in some senses voluntarily, since I was a foreigner living under the rules of a host country - but the point here is not why I lost the freedoms but the effect it had on me. In particular, it wasn’t until this month that I exercised the one freedom I’d lost for over 5 years: (more…)