Epiphany

Recently, I had the good fortune of facing a possibly lengthy jail sentence. The exact length was never actually disclosed, but sixty days, six months and one year were all mentioned. For some sad reason, I was totally prepared to do the sixty day one. I figured "Eighteen days on thirty, that's thirty-six days and I'll be home for Christmas." I don't know why my thought-process still works that way. I'm going to have to work on that.
Another thought that kept coming to mind was "Maybe I'm meant to go to jail so I can help somebody." Believe me when I tell you that there are a lot of people in jail who certainly deserve to be there, but there are also a lot of young, misguided kids who think that's just the way their life is supposed to be. Sadly, a lot of us generally grow to be what we grew up seeing, and if we grow up seeing violence and crime and all of our family and friends going to jail, we accept it as "normal" because it's all around us, when in fact "dysfunctional" is the more appropriate term.
It was the latter that led to my epiphany, and why I consider the whole ordeal to be fortuitous; freedom, obviously, is very important to me. But "being free" is even greater.
Everybody who reads this has freedom. For me to even be able to write this means I have freedom. I'm at home. I'm on my own computer. I'm watching a pretty good football game. I have freedom. But more importantly, I am free. I am free to not be the person I used to be. I am free to not be what I grew up seeing. Even had I went to jail, my freedom might have been taken away, but I still would have been free. My mind, my heart and my spirit can only be confined if I choose to let them.
Peace