Celebrate Freedom!

Today's holiday, Independence Day, came and went without much fanfare, at least for me.  Of course I am appreciative of my freedom, and honor those who paid the ultimate price for that very freedom I have to enjoy.  Freedom isn't the ability to do whatever I want or please, it is the option to live and behave as I ought: to live a moral and ethical life, extending love, courtesy, kindness, and, most of all, civility toward those I come in contact with.  Most people don't realize this is the very definition of freedom.  For a vast majority of the citizenry, freedom is simply a "You can't tell me what to do!" kind of attitude.  How wrong can they be?!  I encourage my readership to re-think what freedom is, and to take a new look at how our actions affect other people.  Do I have a positive or negative influence on those around me?  On a less-serious note, I experienced another day of intense productivity.  First, I took off for another bicycle ride through the surrounding neighborhoods.  Lots of pictures were taken in the hopes of restoring those that were lost over the weekend.  Then my mother and I finally figured out how to have our face-to-face chat online.  She lives five hours away, and we have been talking about how to chat via the internet for quite some time.  We hear of people Skype-ing, and we wanted to check in to it.  The tool we used was Google Hangouts.  (Neither one of us are tech savvy, so it took some minor tweaking before we got it right.)  I didn't keep track of the time, but she said we talked for about an hour.  We will have to make regular (weekly) appointments so we can chat "in person".  Then I took care of a bunch of stuff on the computer: organizing and labeling pictures in their proper folder, tweaking the genealogy files, and so much more.  Now I'm about to read some before heading to bed later on this evening.  I hope your day/holiday was as fulfilling as mine.  Happy Fourth of July!