What is freedom? How is it defined? Maybe this article will explain why. Freedom can be described in many different ways. There is political freedom, religious freedom, freedom of speech, personal freedom, and physical freedom. The dictionary defines these freedoms in an easy to understand way. Physical freedom is defined as “the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint”. Personal freedom is defined as “the power to exercise choice and make decisions without constraint from within or without; autonomy; self-determination”. “The right to choose a religion (or no religion) without interference by the government” is the dictionary’s definition of religious freedom. The other freedoms are defined similarly. But despite the definition in the dictionary, freedom can be defined many different ways by different people.

To a poor farmer in a small country ruled by a tyrant, freedom may be not having almost all his produce taken at harvest so he can support his family properly. To the founders of our country it was the government being separated from religion so that no one could be told to practice a certain religion or be thrown out of the country/killed for not doing so. And to a young, lower middle-class couple in dept, freedom could mean paying off that dept and thus no longer
owing anybody anything. These are only a few situations in which freedom varies from person to person, but lets turn our attention to the media for right now.

Burger King says freedom is having your Whopper with or without pickles. Alltel Wireless insists that freedom is getting to call anyone, on any network starting at seven ‘o clock p.m. Citi Financial at the same time tries to convince everyone that true freedom is the ability to change your credit card rewards from cash to things like vacations and cameras and back again.

As shown by these examples, the definition of freedom differs from person to person and company to company. However, there is the common factor in all of the definitions and examples of not having boundaries. That is most likely the true definition of freedom, to be without restraints. But that is still a generic definition, because as stated before, what freedom means varies from person to person. And what that means is my definition of freedom is different than yours. My definition of freedom is getting a job and my own place, so that I can be alone until I am ready to get a girlfriend and eventually marry. What is your definition of freedom?