Freedom

It was another slow day yesterday, the only highlights being phone calls from Kate and my Mom, and a Skype session with my daughter Meaghan and her daughter Charlotte. Technology is a wonderful thing, allowing us to be in contact with family and friends despite the distances between us.

Technology, and particularly the Internet in the last couple of decades, has done much to allow people like me to live independently for longer, to be free in our own homes to live our lives as fully as possible without the chains of disease trapping us completely. Even as I move into end stage, advances in technology will allow me to live longer, and hopefully better, than ever before.

The challenge I face is whether or not to use all these technologies, to ask myself if life in any form is worth it, if technology will simply prolong my life's duration without improving its quality. It is the age old question, just because we can do something does that mean we must? At a minimum I am free to make these choices. While I am steadily losing my independence, I will maintain my freedom for some time to come, my freedom to make the choices that will decide how, and how long, I live.

Freedom; the ability to make the choices in life, to define my future for myself. Technology can help with independence yet I do not believe it helps, ultimately, in attaining and maintaining my freedom. Sure, we have seen technology, and in particular the Internet once again, help nations gain political freedom and groups gain social equality yet I would argue that personal freedom, ultimately, is gained through the toil and struggle of those who would accept, and demand, the rights and responsibilities that go with that freedom.

Freedom means responsibility, the responsibility to make the hard choices, the responsibility to speak up for what you believe, the responsibility to stand against those who would take away my right to make the choices in my own life. One day, not today, not tomorrow, but one day, I will have to make the ultimate choice, the choice to live or die. I want to be free to make that choice; I accept the responsibility of its outcome. Once life has ended, I will then be truly free.