Too Much of a Good Thing

Some people have a hard enough time getting one thing that they want. Imagine if you got everything you wanted and all of a sudden the two things that you wanted most in life conflicted with each other. That's exactly what happened to Ben Garland formerly of the Air Force Academy. When he was a young boy, he dreamed about going into the Air Force Academy and becoming a fighter pilot. However, he also fantasized about playing in the NFL for the Denver Broncos since he was from Colorado. Now you obviously see where I'm going with this. He went Air Force, and he played well throughout college. He was accepted to a pilot training school in Del Rio, Texas. However, the Denver Broncos also signed him as a free agent. So, there is a dilemma. Do you play for the team you always wanted to play for, or do you go into the Air Force like you always dreamed? If that were me, I would play football because I would not be brave enough to handle the Armed Forces. However, it is honorable that he wants to serve his country in a way that people like me appreciate. Whatever Ben chooses, I think he cannot really go wrong. He gets a great career either way, and he gets to do what most people will never do; he has a career he wants.
Photo by brykmantra on Flickr

Absolute

Sorry I couldn't write yesterday. There's something about finals that puts all of us into overdrive. Anyway, enough with the apologies and onto Fiction Friday!

I returned back into the hole in the wall. I decided I had to go back. There is something awesome about freedom, but there's also something somewhat terrifying. How to operate without rules? Without some sort of absolute moral system, how could I ever know whether or not what I was doing was right? However, I knew that there had to be something beyond the walls of that city. In the city, we had no justification for why the laws are made. We had rules, and they were the absolute. If only we had some sort of book or manual for this type of thing. We had manuals to build things and directions to go to different parts of the city, but there was not even a book that outlines the laws. I had heard that a long time ago there were books that wrote down the laws so that people would know what they could and couldn't do. There even books that told what was right and wrong even beyond the law.

I desired this; I wanted to know there was something beyond just the words of the leaders. I wanted to know that there was something beyond the walls of our city. I had been outside the walls, and I didn't know what to do out there. How could I know what freedom was until I knew how to interpret it?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/candiedwomanire/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Freedom

I'll actually write fiction on Friday this week since I remembered.

I made it through the tunnel into the light on the other side. I noticed that it seemed much brighter than I remembered it. I climbed over the debris that had been left as the fissure had expanded. The world was a lot larger than I ever had imagined from within the wall of Status Quo. Apparently, our city was situated on some sort of a hill that overlooked a vast plain. I was so distracted by the view that I forgot why I had ever left the city. I began to hunt for the unkempt grass for the ball. However, as I looked through one particularly tall patch of grass, something sharp pricked my finger. I lifted my hand out and noticed some tiny black creature latched on to the edge of my finger and apparently biting it. Sure, I hurt a little bit, but I was more intrigued by this little creature with wings. I had never seen one within our city before. Apparently, he finished with his job and flew away. I returned to my hunt for the ball as I knew that Tom would be waiting for me, probably very impatiently.

I eventually found the ball and hustled back to the wall. However, as I looked at that hole in the wall, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go back through it. Returning through that wall meant returning to confinement. Out here, there was freedom; there were no walls to contain my thoughts about what the world could be. If I returned through that crack, I knew that I would be surrendering some part of myself. Once you have found the true freedom, you realize that it has become a part of you.

I wasn't really sure; would I return to the familiar world I knew and loved, or would I take my chances in a world where I did not know the rules if the rules even existed?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/walla2chick/ / CC BY-SA 2.0