So, what does freedom mean?

According to a very perky and all around professional PR person at the World Bank earlier this year, Freedom is "...well...I mean I think we all know what freedom is. Our definition is the same as yours, you know...the freedom to work."

Well, if thats what freedom is then I am out. See you guys later.

And by "you guys" I am not really sure who I am talking to. Because the last time I checked, work has become, well, work, and a lot of people have come to dread their jobs. There is no choice not to work, just a thousands of things you could do at any given moment. And of course the one job you do choose is the wrong choice and you are stuck climbing the corporate ladder until the glory days of retirement when you realize all the money you saved was siphoned off by well groomed but all around unspectacular human being who smiles too much and eats all the shrimp cocktail at parties.

I really do not want that to be the moment when I realize that I should have just settled down with someone who made me feel wonderful, planted a garden, and had a potluck every single night. Because what is freedom worth if you cannot spend it with the ones you love? And what is freedom, exactly, if you do not get to create it yourself?

At this point, our freedom of choice is standing dumbfounded in the laundry detergent aisle, wondering how the hell there could 10,000 variations of the same simple product. And lest you do not feel free enough, the cereal aisle is just around the corner. Hold on to your hats! And our freedom of expression has become learning how to use words in just the right combination so as not to hurt anyones feelings or step on anyones toes, or at least stupify them until you have a chance to run away or change your mind. Another option is to create a catchy slogan that can be easily slapped onto bumpers and T-shirts, have a martini, and call it a job well done. Poets and songwriters barely suvive in the damp little corners of popular attention and can, every so often, Wow us with a piece of true beauty before it recedes again. Popular music beats its way forcefully into the eardrums of every citizen, until even your grandmother is wondering "where my bitches and hos at?"

In America, the land of the free, a good percentage of our population is, or has been, in jail. And just to drive all of this home let me lay out a well known and universally feared senario: going throught airport security.

There is nothing more freeing than taking off your belt, coat, shoes and jewlery for a apathetic stranger in uniform. And if the feeling of synthetic carpet between your toesies doesnt do it for you, why dont you put all of your liquids into a plastic bag, while a college-age, pimply grumpy-face empties the contents of your exuisitely packed bag onto the table in front of a bunch of rubber neckers. You feel as if you are hiding something, as though you should yell "I have a bomb!" just to cut the tension in the air. But you know that even a child sneezing will probably be slammed to the floor by a over-worked and underpaid rent-a-cop, and so you keep quiet.

Feel safe? Better yet, feel free.

Im guessing the answer is no. Solution? I got nothin. But living in the United States has become, I have heard, increasingly like living in a police state. So perhaps the best idea is to get together with your friends and family and create a space that makes you feel really, truely free: all the way from your Blackberry to your Bluetooth.