Owning Ourselves

An old American creed reminds us that liberty means responsibility.
Owning Ourselves
Pierre Blaché/Unsplash
Jeff Minick
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Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s gone
So goes a signature line from singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”

Sometimes we become so accustomed to someone or something—a spouse, a child, good health—that only their absence opens our eyes and our hearts. Catastrophe strikes—a death, a dire illness, a bankruptcy—and only then does the familiar become wonderfully and fearfully precious.

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
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