This Memorial Day, let’s acknowledge how valuable the amount of time we spend living this life truly is.

We all have to die. But we don’t all get the privilege of dying for something. Something big, something important, or something amazing: freedom. I define patriotism in myself as an intense gratitude for all vets, past and present, who are (or were) happy to die for our freedom.

We all have to die. But we don’t all get the privilege of dying for something.

And what being happy to die for your country’s freedom really means is being ready and willing to give up your life as currency to pre-pay — on demand and on command — to insure that no government does to us the people, ever again, what the government we originally revolted against did to us, including our own.

For those who watched my very first video in Nathan Hale Park where I recount the story of how my mom took me there when I was 6 years old to explain to me the importance of the Bill of Rights and that people had died for me during the Revolutionary War, not so that they would have freedom of speech or freedom of religion or the right to vote or the right to due process, but so that I would, you know that that is why I hold my political/social justice interviews there.

Nathan Hale’s only regret was that he had but one life to lose for his country.