And don’t answer, “My job, my wife, my pathetic income … whatever.”
Sure, there are legitimate factors “stopping” us all. (I am too old, for instance, to credibly proposition Tom Hiddleston.) But freedom is (among other things) the art of creating alternatives.*
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*Though not necessarily any good alternatives to Tom Hiddleston.
(H/T Joel for the meme. Spread it around if you enjoy it.)
And I’m all “Who the hell is Tom Hiddleston?”
Now that I’ve been reminded, I think I want one of those for the Lair. A much more fun character than Thor, (with allowance for the megalomania and mass murder…)
I’ve had enough fun living my life to ever worry about that sort of thing.
Hey, maybe Tom likes older women! 🙂
I’m reminded of a little thing I did, years ago. A friend had a life-sized cutout of The Man With No Name, which he kept in his front room. One day, I moved it to the living room. He told me just about soiled himself when he got home. (He left his house unlocked, and I came and went as I pleased.)
I also know the names of very few of the newer crop of celebrities. If I haven’t seen their names in the news for some reason — usually related to alcohol or drugs, I’m all like, “Who?”
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any actresses close to my age who aren’t screaming lefty-loons, so you won’t need to worry about my name hitting the tabloids as a celebrity stalker.
What’s stopping ME? Rules of engagement.
If ‘they’ don’t shoot first, I won’t. When ‘they’ do, the admonition “without harm” no longer applies.
To make an omelet, an egg must be broken. But, one needs an egg before starting …
Expat — The meme has nothing to do with war. It has to do with everyday life choices.
For those who have made themselves free that little, “meme,” is like most libertarian propaganda, preachy vacuous sentiment.
About two years ago I published an article, “What Will You Do With Freedom?,” on a libertarian site. There were few responses (9 or 10), which I expected. I am firmly convinced that most people neither expect to be free or truly want to be free. But if freedom was handed to them they wouldn’t know what to do with it and would waste their lives in pursuit of empty entertainment and hedonistic pleasure, because that is what they think freedom is, being able, “to do anything at all.”
It is not, “without doing harm to others,” that matters. What the meme leaves out is, “without doing harm to oneself or one’s future.”
We have the power, all of us, but most don’t recognize that they do and the ones that do recognize that power within themselves I bectha are the more happy ones.
My health has slowed me down, but I like to think it hasn’t actually stopped me. Yet.
It’s just taking me 10 years to get halfway through my 1-year plan 🙂
I guess I’m a bit lucky, I’ve already done the biggest thing I wanted to do and that was to walk away from a dreary job. It took some planning, and I took one heck of a pay cut but I’m free, I live in the country and while I do respect the neighbors, I also do whatever the heck I want withing reason. That means sitting around the fire pit in the back yard having a beer, cocktails with friends on the deck, dirt biking and bush crafting, range time, gardening etc whenever I like. Hell there are even days when I’m up at the crack of 10 or 11 in the morning. Life is good.
The Government. I just had to empty my checking and savings accounts to pay the IRS (I tripped some income threshold and now my health insurance counts as a Cadillac plan and there were a few other tax surprises). Several years of savings gone in the blink of an eye to keep the beast at bay. I’m optimistic about next year since my quarterly payments under the tax cut are so much less.
First of all, Randall, I apologize. Your comment went into spam and I didn’t see it for nearly two days.
strycat — I’m so sorry; I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Well, unless my worst enemy was one of those people who thinks we don’t pay enough income tax.
I see that this isn’t the dream meme. It wasn’t meant to be smug or preachy. I wasn’t meant to say, “I’m free; why aren’t you?” It was just intended to get people thinking about choices. In that, it mostly failed. Oh well. There will be other memes.