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Pay Yourself First

“Pay yourself first!” is a term most associated with “saving”.  The philosophy is no matter how many bills you have to pay if you don’t build the habit of paying yourself first before anyone else you will never learn how to save. This absolutely is the only difference between who build wealth and people who do not.   Judging a Toastmasters contest I saw a fascinating speech by a lady who taught herself to save by saving a quarter every day.  As she continued her speech I began to think how can this be applied to the rest of our lives physically, spiritually and mentally?  How was I already applying this? The truly happy people I have met in this world take great care to fulfill themselves in all three areas.

wyze

This is my cousin Roger “Wyze” Smith and his wife Joy-Ann Smith hitting the gym. On a particularly busy and stressful day in their lives they couldn’t hit the gym so they blasted us all with a pic of them putting in gym work right there in the living room. That’s how we put a quarter away every day for physical being.  Not only that but they found a way to spend time together doing something positive for themselves which in turn will do something positive for them.  The idea of spending time while working out together both feed into each other.

A funny thing happens when you are taking care of yourself physically. Your life energy begins to grow which turns the “not enough time in the day” attitude into looking for things to do to fill up your time.  Now most people don’t take advantage of this by stimulating their mind and spirit so they have a lot more time to pick themselves apart.  Others are focusing on one of the other areas besides the physical but experience a similar result.  You have to feed all three areas of being period, it’s non negotiable to being truly happy.

Hey! (duck dynasty style) guess what life is hard for everyone I don’t know why people spend so much time doing nothing except sitting around trying to convince each other who’s life is harder instead of fixing it.  Stress, responsibility and daily life take their toll on all of us which is why you need to put more in than those things can take away from you.

It’s simple math for personal growth to stay happy with yourself you have to make deposits into the bank of you than life can withdraw. You can’t look for this type of fulfillment in spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, group of friends you have to find it within yourself.  Divorce courts and the restraining order clerk at the courthouse can tell you just how well that philosophy works.

So what’s the point? A very short time after you start changing your habits to “Pay yourself first!” in any area of being (physically, spiritually or mentally) an amazing thing happens, you start to become the version of you that you have always wanted to be.  The Wife, Mother, Father, Husband, Son, Daughter, Friend you have always wanted to be. You really have no idea how much you deserve to allow yourself to be those things.

Let’s take it back to the Smiths shown above.  They are busy with work and kids, she has her things, he has things but they decided to do this together.  That is important because these are the things that keep families together because you are keeping yourself a complete person.  They just happen to be spending time with each other while doing it which on turn will be the catalyst for new and exciting things in their relationship.

Very few life accomplishments are made by leaps and bounds it’s from putting a quarter away at a time. Be willing to do the work, find a way!  As “pay yourself first” in finance is the great separator between the wealthy and the poor so is it the great separator between the people who accomplish their goals and those who don’t.

When I am at the gym on the West Coast the Smiths are at the gym on the east coast. This got to be mutually supportive as they post pics on their Fb accounts and I as you all know I am a foursquare addict. At this point no one wants to be the one who fails to post something that day.  Not only is this their time time but this is now family time too. See how it just keeps building?

Here is a small sample of my morning schedule for the single parents out there with excuses:

  •    5AM at the gym (Workout I listen to a book on audible.  During Cardio I read some religious work on my phone*)
  •    6:15AM Home (Breakfast, Shower, Foreign language lesson, Program my Social Media Posts from morning news)
  •    7:10AM Out the door (Morning laughs with my son in the car)

*King James Bible, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, Tipitaka etc. Yes there is an app for that!

The first 2 hours of my day are dedicated to me.  I don’t make any massive progress at these items in any particular day but I do manage to hit my mind body and soul before I become a functional part of this society. It really makes a big difference on whether you are happy to be alive or just trying to get through another day.

It doesn’t matter if you have a busy family life like the Smiths or you are a busy single parent like myself  “Pay yourself first!” you don’t have to do it our way but you have to do it some way.  Pick up that book, go back to school, walk into that church, learn that language just please take the first step towards something you have dreamed about doing. Trust me I know you all and you absolutely are worth the extra effort!.

 

 

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5 Apps I can’t live without

There are many people out there who like to be busy.  Their sense of accomplishment comes from having every moment of their time filled with a task then they can check off for a visible sense of self esteem, I am not one of them.  I prefer to spend time with my son, learning languages, playing guitar, meeting new people, exploring new cultures, having a cocktail and good times with friends,  literally and endless list of other really cool stuff.  I should probably add authoring life changing articles to that list =)

This is not about being lazy it’s about you being able to spend your time where you want to the most.  In order to create the space in my schedule to do those things I have to get better return on my time not spent doing something creative or fun.  I am never going to take my last breath thinking I should have worked harder, achieved more, had less fun or left a great legacy “outside” of the people that mean the most to me in my life.  If accolades, accomplishment, respect and adoration come as a bi-product to doing something things I really enjoy doing then fantastic!

There are so many apps available that you could get glued to your electronics forever.  It happens to all of us so I am on a constant quest for apps that aggregate other apps and services that either I use frequently or my clients use frequently.  Here are the 5 I have found that could greatly reduced your electronic time and increase your human time.

The common thread with these apps:

  • Aggregation
  • Has a Sweet Dashboard
  • Functionality needed to be effective in each app type
  • Can be used online and any device that matters

The Question: “ How are you posting things sitting right in front of me not touching your phone?”

Hoot Screen 2

Hoot Screen

1.  Hootsuite:  By far the Best Social Media Aggregation tool allowing you to pick which business and personal social media accounts a post appears on. The Dashboard is a fantastic way to keep up to date on Facebook, Facebook Pages, Twitter, Foursquare, Linkedin, Linkedin Groups you manage, Google+ Pages, (personal Google+ coming soon) and Youtube without having to log into each one of them separatel. You can customize what feeds in a particular social media outlet come through. The best part is that you can set up scheduled posts to your social media outlets to post throughout the day. Additional functions like analytics, trend spotting and the ability to assign teams to accounts literally make it like having your own Cape Canaveral Control Center for Social Media.

Thank you to my good friend Doug Taber for telling about this app. My father pulled me kicking and screaming in Facebook.  Once I joined Facebook I received a barrage of requests for Twitter and Foursquare. I was less than thrilled because of how much work this all seemed like. I was already on Linkedin with a ton of business connections and thought that was too much to manage on it’s own. If you own your own business than you have to duplicate everything for that. NO THANKS! Hootsuite hands down.

Online Plugin: “Hootlet”  Allows you to post right from the page you are on without having to go into Hootsuite.

The Question: “Are you spending all day just reading stuff on the internet and posting it?  How do you have time to do that?”

Pulse

2.  Pulse:  This news/blog site aggregation tool helps you custom build  categories of information in groups under labels. Some of mine are Health, Tech, Business, Science, etc. Within those categories you select from your favorite major online news/blog sites sources you want see story blurbs from.  This saves you from having to log into separate news sites to cross reference an article. Viewing stories from major outlets like, Fox, CNN, NBC, CNET, Car & Driver, Fast Company, ESPN, Associated Press and Muscle & Fitness just to name a few saves you hours of searching through sites that you may visit one by one.

I can be away from the computer for hours and be up to date on the days events in less than 15 minutes. I also use this in conjunction with Hootsuite for my timed posts through out the day. 15 minutes in the morning and my posts for the day are set.  

Online Plugin: “Save to Pulse” With this you can save stories from site not available in the Pulse up are on for later viewing. Very useful if you have other sites you visit that may be specific to your area of expertise that you cannot receive feeds from in Pulse.

The Question: “Are you spending all day just reading stuff on the internet and posting it?  How do you have time to do that?”

google Drive

3.  Google Drive:  This app is setting the standard for what is possible with online sharing, document, storage, taking notes, grocery lists.  If you are like me and hate getting emails of the same document then having to go back look for the right version this app is for you. People incorrectly have conversations in email, that is not what it is for. Retraining people on how to use tools correctly is like breaking a wild horse. It is easier to work on a document together in real time with Google Drive. You can take 2 days worth of sending emails back and forth correcting and re correcting a document down to 30 minutes. Plus you can store anything there in their original non google formats you can just can’t those document types unless you convert them. It integrates well with Open Office, Google Chrome, and the Google Android Operating Systems. Real time saving is another bonus, you type it and it is there.

Google Drive has taken the Android open source development philosophy to all of it’s apps and extensions  functionality. For those that refuse to evolve Windows type functions are available in Drive and many other apps. Apple and Google Drive are working well together but they have blocked the latest version of Skydrive. What does that tell you?  

Download:  “Google Drive” it to your server, phone, pad, laptop and you have easy redundancy as all files sync automatically.

The Question: “Everyone has their favorite messenger app, how do you communicate with them through chat?”

imo

4.  IMO Messenger:  Messenger apps won’t die! Why? There are people out there who realize most email conversations should actually be chats. Companies are starting to crack down on email and personal cell phone usage in the workplace. People are married to their favorites, Skype, Yahoo, Facebook, Google Talk. IMO Chat allows you to put them all together. You can log in to any number of them at the same time. To others it looks like you are logged into the chat of their choice.

Still in Beta so you can’t video chat with it yet for you diehard Skypers but you can use the Skype chat function. Video is coming soon!

Online Plugin: “IMO Messenger” gives you the dashboard

The Question: “Is there a better way to see all of your financial accounts?”  

min

5.  Mint.com: The older you get seems like the more accounts you have.  Mint is where you can track them all. From investments, to credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages, auto loans you name it, it is there.

Visualizing each account is necessary at times but being able to see your entire portfolio net worth gives you something easy to manage. Plus having individual account apps on your phone gives a thief immediate targets to drain your accounts.  

Online Plugin:  It is available for all major devices

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Romance

Romance, perhaps the most misunderstood word in the English language. I searched the plethora of online dictionaries as well as the public library through literally hundreds of definitions…and finally there is was, the definition that summed it all up.

ro·mance

/rōˈmans/

Noun
A feeling of excitement associated with love

Verb
to court, or woo

In it’s simplest form romance is excitement which manifests itself across different species in different ways. A Peacock’s feathers, the song of a whale or the majestic dance of a Swan are all examples.

If are from my generation you probably remember making that first mixed tape for a girl in junior high school. The minutes turned into hours, the hours turned into days waiting for the right songs to come on the radio. Catching one a bit too late and cutting it a bit too early t’s comments at the end. The look on her face when you gave it to her wrapped in a sheet of loose leaf paper with the sweetest words a 12-year-old boy could muster. You waited anxiously for her to write you a note the next day telling you how she listened to it over and over again falling asleep with thoughts of you in her heart.

But these are confusing times where we mistake sexual equality for a changing of the roles in our basic human animal nature. Undeniably we as men and women are hardwired very differently. That difference is so great at the times the most basic of communication can be grossly misinterpreted for the exact opposite meaning the message was meant to convey. As it should be women are gaining ground daily in that battle for sexual equality of function in our society. This does not mean that it changes our inherent primal needs as individual sexes.

Currently we are in the phase of finding out how to balance to changing dynamic of the last 50 years where women stayed home took care of the kids and men worked. Some think that this is destroying the family dynamic, I prefer to think of it as the family dynamic is undergoing a long evolution. We are figuring it out! Men are more hands on with the raising of their children, women are bringing more financially to the table which in the long run will only benefit our society long-term.

Occasionally I officiate a wedding. Unlike most people I don’t just show up to do it, I take it seriously meeting with the couple before and asking some serious questions:

1. Do you each know you who are as individuals?
2. Do you each know who you are as a couple?
3. Do you know what each one needs long-term?

Relationships are always great at the beginning because of the very primal nature of the nature of that initial attraction and courtship. He wants to win the battle for the right to be with her and she wants to be desired. These roles also exist in same-sex relationships.

Today this is no longer the beginning, middle and extent of a relationship anymore. Yes, this is the programming we have so it is how we get the party started but we must be aware of the complexity in today’s society. As the relationship goes on Man has to realize he is NOT going to make every decision and Woman has to realize she does NOT have to try to influence every decision to make herself feel an equal part of the relationship.

However you balance each other out that is for you to decide not anyone else so don’t try to fit anyone’s mold. You can’t these tasks are divided up by sex anymore you have to sit down and work out who is going to do what. Here are some examples:

  1. If one of you expresses the desire to spend more time with the kids you don’t punish the other for not spending equal time.
  2. If you decide one of you should not work because it is more cost-effective for one to stay home then you don’t complain they don’t have job.
  3. If you decide you are going to maintain a relationship of your life, my life and our life don’t get mad when the other person is doing “their” life things without you.

This is where communication comes in not only with each other but with yourself. Many people look right at the other person as the root of all their unhappiness before they asked themselves what has changed in me. Here is where I think that romance is lost. Of the 10 couples I interviewed for this article who run the complete spectrum of what sex was the Alpha and what sex was the Beta the responses surprisingly enough did go straight down the sexual line.  In some way shape or form these ideas were expressed:

  • Women: “I wish he would be more of a man” (The Primal Desire complex)
  • Men: “I wish she appreciated the things I do for her more” (The Hero Complex)

Ultimately she measures her worth to you by the things you are willing to do for her and he measures how well he is performing those tasks by the health of your sexual relationship.  The problem is she doesn’t know exactly when, where and how she wants you to exercise this man hood so he is scratching his head trying to figure out what he can do to show you how much he loves you.

How do make it work? Romance! Another item on my checklist before officiating weddings is calling my Mother minutes before. She give me the same advice for the couple every single time; “Remind them to never let the courtship end”. My mother is a very long-winded woman but in this brief statement is a culmination of all her wisdom about love. In 8 words she has said more than any of her extended lectures.

To me what that means is you both need to accommodate that hard genetic wiring no matter where the places we apply them have shifted in the modern world.

Ladies don’t move the carrot without letting him know it has moved. Your flowers may look like something else to you just be mindful that if he gets that something else wrong as things calm down in the relationship. If he made the effort in a way that reflects something about who you are and what you like don’t emasculate him for that, gently point him to the right road for the next time.

Gentleman don’t stop! She wants you to continue to woo her. No it does not have to be fancy every time but be able to at least maintain the level of things that you started with. Romance within your means from the beginning. Any drop off means you don’t desire her as much as you once did and that can be nothing further from the truth.

ro·mance

/rōˈmans/

Begins, ends and continues not with the other person but with you. Know who are, stay abreast of your ever-changing needs with the ability to communicate them clearly to yourself and your partner. How you balance may change but if you stay on the same page the courtship will never die.

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Book Review: Who’s Afraid of Post Blackness? What it means to Be Black Now By Touré

Who's afraid of post blackness

It has taken me months to write this review.  Normally I pick a book a year that either my sister and I will read together or one that I have recently read for us to discuss once she is done.  This is one of the many ways we stay connected living on opposite coasts.  I must confess that this book affected me so deeply I never discussed it contents nor how I felt about it with my sister.    She will be reading why for the first time as you are.

In my eyes the mark of every great work of literature is that the author is able to make you feel like out of all the people who are reading this book that they wrote it just for you.  From the beginning I felt like I was in a conversation with an old friend.  The 1st Chapter “Forty Million Ways to Be Black” sets up the rest of the book beautifully with a story about skydiving for his show “I’ll Try Anything Once”  illustrating the struggle to define Blackness in a box.

On Page 1 we are hit with “Brother, Black people don’t do that.”  A response to Touré being in town to film him Skydiving for his show.  A response given by 3 middle-aged Black men working at the restaurant.  Needless to say he went anyway and by Page 4 he hits us with  ”It was the most deeply spiritual experience in my life”  He also goes on to say how the experience made him certain that there was a God, “I went skydiving and ended up in church.”  If he had allowed himself to be boxed into the scope of Blackness as defined by the gentlemen he met earlier he would never have had such a wonderful experience.

I didn’t take long for the book to make its point that there is no damn box.  On Page 5 he recalls from an interview with Henry Louis Gates jr. the director of Harvard’s DuBois Institute for African American Research “if there are forty  million Black Americans then there are forty million ways to be Black.” Such a simple alternate concept to my own thinking has eluded me my entire life.  The focus of the book is a 105 interviews of some of the most prominent Black figures of our time used to help Touré define his place in the entire mosaic of modern Blackness.

The epiphany moment I had after reading just 5 pages made me feel like this book was a guide to help me in my own struggle to define my personal interpretation of Blackness.  In February I wrote Who Are You? discussing some of my struggles with identity which I never understood was part of a larger struggle to understand my place in the Black Community.  This book very well may have been the missing link to a whole in my soul that has existed since age 13.

Think of the post-Blackness as a starting point to begin to define Blackness in an era where common stereotypical definition can no longer encompass what is means to be Black in America.  How do we as individual Black people begin to stretch our own boundaries to fully embrace the concept that there is no one definition to define who are and more importantly who we can become.

Chapter 4 “Shut up, Touré! You Ain’t Black!” is where he goes on to interject his personal story, the foundation of his experience with people trying to define his Blackness for him.  Here he lays outs the key experiences that formed his curiosity into the concept of what Blackness is in the first place.  Can it or should it be defined?  This is a very important question considering most recently Rob Parker a Black correspondent at ESPN was fired for his “Is he a brother or a cornball brother?” comment during a tirade where he questions the Blackness of Redskins Rokkie QB Robert Griffin III.

To really appreciate this book I think one has to know a little bit about Touré.  A lot of writers say they have done this or that or they are writing with a certain emotion that people may or may not find credible.  If you know anything about his previous work you know that he a track record of taking things head on that scare him to death.  When he says he is a writing with a certain tone or emotion you can absolutely believe it.  Don’t believe me just watch “I’ll Try Anything Once” to get a deeper look at the author.

It takes a lot to admit you don’t know everything (Touré lives in this space which is a big reason I am fan), to go out and interview 105 of the most well-respected Black personalities to create an informed opinion about your own Blackness.  It takes even more to expose things for all the world to see that challenge your own ideals within the work you are creating.  He does this on numerous occasions throughout the book, far too many to quote in this review.

Toure

Touré isn’t a singular work writer everything he says, does or writes is a culmination of the moments leading up to that point in his life.  I look at him the James Baldwin of our time, documenting a Black Renaissance that we won’t even realized happened for 30 years from this point.   The human connection element of the book is taking those facts collected from 105 interviews and filtering it through some very deep personal experiences in his life that he willingly shares in order to help us define the definition of our own Blackness for ourselves.

Just like he has outbursts in those media outlets that make people comfortable he has outbursts in this book that challenge varying parameters people use to define Blackness today.  Racism is definitely not dead and I can understand many interpretations of this book but any person of minimal intelligence taking this book as a statement that Touré is saying racism is over they could benefit from a reading comprehension class.

Every Black person has a different internal reaction to growing up Black America which may cause some people not to identify with Touré’s interpretation of based on his youth experience.   The sudden exposure to white culture in his youth is certainly a big part of who he is today, how he writes and most certainly one of many catalysts for this book.  His exposure was a result of decisions he did not make mine was by birth nevertheless I saw a very intimate parallel between the two experiences which helped me make reading this book my own.

When I finished the book I had a better sense not only of my personal identity but a better grasp of my internal struggle to define my personal Blackness.   I am quite positive only my sister understands the scope of what that encompasses for me.  Often I ask myself what is my place in the Black Community?  It is comforting to know that it is what I has always seen it as, my place to define and no one else.

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Happy 4th of July

One of the greatest statements that can be applied universally in life came from the Greatest Hockey player to ever live:

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky. 

This is my shot

Regardless of how you feel about the State of the Union or how we got here, one thing is clear:  things won’t get any better by spreading hate and discontent in social media unless it is on the pages of your elected officials.  Our country will only improve if we start taking shots at fixing the issues by getting the attention of those who are elected to represent us.  Take the shot instead of passing the blame for someone else not scoring for you.

If you stick a kid in a corner with a slew of berating names they will eventually live up to that.  If you feed them positivity, discipline and nurture them they have a great shot to be something.  When it comes to this ideal, the United States of America, the President nor the people are exempt.

At some point, individual responsibility needs to be taken and some of that negative energy needs to be redirected toward making crucial changes.  This was a core message in the President’s last campaign which, if it were implemented would have been effective; I have yet to see it.

Next time you want to post something negative about this country, use that time to take your ass to your local town or city council meeting; find out who the state officials are in your area, or write your Congressman.  Do anything other than feed into the negativity of the uneducated masses who will ride that horse like the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse to this country’s oblivion.

Do you even know who your representatives are? Do you know who to complain to instead of FB, Twitter and rallying your friends around a negative ideal?  That course will only infest your soul and the souls around you because it has no outlet that has chance to lead to a positive result.  Here are a few of mine:

    Mayor of Vista:                               Judy Ritter

    State Assembly:                             Martin Garrick

    State Senator:                                Mark Wyland

    House of Representatives:        Darrell Issa

    Senators:                                          Barbara Boxer    

                                                                  Diane Feinstein

If you don’t know, Google it like you would everything else.

Use those same social media outlets to bend their ear; that is the foundation upon which this country was built.  We are where we are because the people who show up in this regard aren’t us.  If you can’t nearly effortlessly make a similar list of your elected representatives that you have actually contacted, this unfortunately includes you.

The last time I read the Constitution, Congress made laws.  It has always astonished me that in my lifetime we make the President the scapegoat for a fucked up Congress that can’t find a way to work together for the betterment of the people.  Like any leadership position, the President gets too much credit when things go right and too much blame when things go wrong.

Has the President made some mistakes?  Absolutely.  But it is grossly naive to think that just because we elected a black President that we as a nation were ready for a black President.  President Obama was elected due to the votes from those that don’t normally vote.  What the consistently politically involved voting masses know, the rich, the leaders of Fortune 1000 companies, the local guy in your town killing it financially knows, is that the world of politics is a marathon not a sprint.

They go to EVERY political soirèe that YOU don’t go to at the level that most benefits them to have a voice with their elected officials.  They know the game, they work the game.  To think that we cast our vote for change hoping that poof, like magic, with the snap of a finger it would happen is ridiculous.

How long does it take a cruise ship at full speed to turn after you turn crank the wheel?  How long does it take to slow down a 2 mile freight train to get it on another track?  How big is the machine of this country?

Do you really think you have a better shot of getting something done complaining to your friends on FB, Twitter, or any other social media outlets? Wouldn’t it be more conducive to actually get involved politically?  If you aren’t one to take action but rather prefer to blast your opinions via social media, then I have probably already lost you as a reader.

It is far too easy to blame the President because both sides of the race coin can’t stand where we are today.  There are those that weren’t ready for a President of color who experienced one.  There are those that were ready for a President of color now realizing we aren’t as far along on racial issues as we thought.  Accepting that fact means we all have to admit that there are still those seen as greater than or lesser than based on the color of their skin.  Neither side seems willing to admit that.

From day one, there has been a systematic attempt to dismantle this Presidency rather than support it.  We all thought that WE were ready and more importantly that HE was ready to overcome any gap in that thinking with clear decisive leadership.  Why we cannot be honest with ourselves that we just aren’t there yet is beyond me.  We are where we are in this country…there is still a lot of real work to do.  If you think this was bad, wait until we put  a woman, Homosexual, Hispanic and then the trifecta, the lesbian black woman whose parents immigrated here illegally in to the Presidency.

There will always be work to do in this great country because our Constitution is a living document.   Based on the opportunities that the Constitution affords us someone is going to die trying to get here today.  They will have $50 bucks in their pocket and within 5 years they will be living a productive life, positively contributing to the community while maintaining a better standard of living than the rest of us.  The first two years of their life here will be spent working jobs we consider menial, making money we would rather shun to receive unemployment, living in conditions we consider beneath us, having to learn a new language, and as a whole overcome greater obstacles than the ones we complain about daily.

Unless you are a member of a tribe that is a considered a sovereign nation, everyone one of your asses is an immigrant.  Whether you are the ancestor of someone brought here by force, the ancestors of the lower class and criminals that Europe flooded this country with to destroy it from within, or you are one of the few who came on your own accord, you are American.  Being an American comes with great responsibility.

We might not be where we are today because we worked peacefully in concert with one another, but we damn sure did a pretty good job considering the circumstances we all came from.  Take it to the next level; be the solution and not the problem.  Be the light not the dark, be the reason not the excuse.  Live, love, laugh and take your shot at your life’s legacy; make a difference.

God bless America’s fighting men and women, past and present who afford us the opportunity to live free!