Freedom, by QueenAmazon
"I am the light. I am an angel of death. I am power. This is freedom."
-Witchblade, Issue 1, pages 20-21
I believe that freedom is one of the greatest things in the world, right up there with love and courage. Freedom is what we all strive for, and although very few are able to actually achieve it, the rest of us are under the delusion that we are truly free of sovereign rule.
What is freedom? Freedom is the state of being able to make your own decisions, opposed from having decisions made for you. These decisions are made based on what is right for YOU, and in many cases the ones you love as well.
A truly free person does not plan out each hour of the day based on clocks and time; rather, she takes what comes to her and acts upon it. She is free of obligations to her family, friends, and fellow humans; she acts only as she sees fit. She is not indebted to anyone, not even the being or beings she believes to be her creator(s). The free are able to travel, to wander without worry; they have no set home in a single location. The world is their home, the roads are their hallways, and sometimes, a home can be a person instead of a place.
As I have already stated, freedom is living without obligations to anyone, thus, it is next to impossible to live in any existing country these days and be truly free. In the United States, as well as the majority of the countries in this world, everyone is taxed to some degree, with the acception of (in most cases) the homeless and eastern spiritual figures such as the Dali Lama and Tibetan monks. However, in the past it was not always like this. Nomadic tribes, such as the ancient amazons, who originated in Chin and rode north to Siberia, and then west to what is now Turkey, The Middle East, and Africa, had no obligations towards the Amazon Nation, nor were they FORCED to serve their queens; they did so because they chose to. Without a queen to make decisions, they would have quickly become divided and, divided they would have fell a lot sooner than they actually did. If the words of the queen went against what even a single amazon wanted, and she felt strongly enough, she would challenge the queen to a fight to the death. The queen could choose whether or not to accept the challenge, though she knew that if she declined , she would be thought of as weak and thus a disgrace to the nation. If defeated and killed by the challenger, the amazon who beat her in battle would become the new queen of the amazons.
I believe that freedom is NOT an illusion, that freedom is as real as the earth, the sky, the trees, but I honestly doubt that I will ever achieve true freedom, at least in this life. When I turn eighteen (exactly 2 years, 7 months, 1 week, and 1 day from the time I am writing this essay), I will feel freer: I will no longer have to listen to and live with my parents, though, in a way, I will be even less free than I was before: I will have to provide for myself and pay my own taxes, versus living off the income of my parents. I will have jury duty, a job which reserves most of my time, and perhaps someday (thought not bloody likely) a family of my own. Now, I leave the reader to ask themselves this: "Am I truly free?"
