Do you ever stop and take a minute? Stop reading this for a minute and look around -- wherever you are, right now.

What do you see? Your house? Your apartment? Your car? The bus you take into town? Your doctor's office? Your university? Your church?

Chances are, you see something good. Hopefully, you see beauty somewhere in all of it. Hopefully, you recognize that you are blessed and that you have many things -- physical things, yes, but also opportunities. That's truly what we should value most in this country, The Land of the Free. A land full of opportunities.

This is what we take for granted, most of all. Opportunities. Freedoms. We, the people of the United States.

Freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, petition. The freedom to express yourself in practically every (non-threatening) way possible.

If you feel like standing on the street corner and yelling out the weather forecast at the top of your lungs, you can.

If you want to wake up early on a Sunday morning (or really any day of the week), head to your place of worship, and gather with others who believe what you do, you can! Peacefully and without reproach.

If you want to protest the government or businesses with controversial practices, go right ahead because you have been afforded that opportunity.

If you want to get dressed up in the most ridiculous outfit you can find and parade around town, you can. Nobody will lock you up just for looking crazy. You have that freedom. Honestly, even if you want to wear *zero* clothing, you can (in some places).

If you disagree with me and want to make that known, you can. It's a click of a button away -- that's freedom.

Considering the majority of the population that visits this website, I want to bring up a relatable example.

Sometime during the end of my undergraduate college education, I realized that I had been viewing my time at university from a very wrong perspective. I was given this grand opportunity to receive a college education, something that, in respect to the entire world population, so little people get the chance to do. In fact, though the rates are climbing, the majority of the world's population still has not completed tertiary education.

Here's a map I found fascinating:

So you see?

I didn't have to go to class. I got to because I was fortunate enough to receive scholarships and grants that helped me pay for tuition.

I don't have to go to work every day. The government doesn't force me to, and nobody really makes that decision for me. I get to go to work because I had the freedom to decide what job I wanted after I got a degree in something I choseto study.

I'm able to freely write this piece without fear of government or terrorist groups seeing it and arresting me for having an opinion (although yes, my opinion is decidedly pro-government, or at least pre-government intervention in this regard).

Hopefully, my point is coming across as this: we should be thankful for our freedoms rather than abuse them. We should exercise them with respect and gratitude.

This is how I see the world. Maybe you can, too. Maybe we can all appreciate the freedoms that we have, the privileges we are given.

Photo by Andrew Ruiz on Unsplash

Facts & Statistics taken from Our World in Data [https://ourworldindata.org/tertiary-education] and the U.S. Bill of Rights.