Liberty - It's Not Something That Just Is

Too often we don’t appreciate what we didn’t work for or had to sacrifice for in one way or another.  Hand something to us with no effort exerted on our part to acquire it, and we’ll probably exhibit some scantily shallow and rather quickly fleeting degree of appreciation for it.  But make us work for something and expend actual energy in order to obtain it, and we’ll likely hold it with noticeably more importance.  Force us to step it up and sacrifice for some cause to the point that we lose something desperately cherished in the pursuit and it becomes valuable above and beyond most other things.  Press us to the edge and put us in a position where we actually risk dying for something and that this one cherished shot that we have at life hangs in a frighteningly precarious balance, that ‘something’ becomes indescribably priceless.  

If we didn’t give something in order to obtain something, then we’re probably holding it rather loosely and with some inexcusable degree of disregard.  If there’s not some work or sacrifice or risk in the exchange, then the greatest gifts imaginable can experience the greatest disregard conceivable.  Taking great things for granted is little more than taking them to a grave from which we can never reclaim them.  Liberty is one of those things.