It feels like old times.

I just ran into an old friend at a wedding this past weekend. After the night was over, I found myself thinking how nice it was to see him again. So, being the good little soldier of the technological revolution that I am, I left him a message on his Facebook to let him know. The essence of my message was that seeing an old friend reminded me of old times.
Tonight, I was reading his reply to my message, and I had a thought. At some point in the not too distant future, I will likely find myself thinking about right now as "good old times." My thought continued to progress and I was struck with the question or regrets. Hindsight being what it is, whenever I reflect on old memories there is always something I miss or wish I had done differently. My question became; what might I look back on in a few years and wish I had done different right now, and how how could I prevent this from becoming a reality?
The more I thought about this question, the more I realized that I cannot. A great mentor once told me that "The person you are today is a direct result of every experience you have had and how you chose to react to it." As long as I consider my actions and do what I believe is the right thing at the time, I will live happily with the outcome.

The Value of Choice

I have stated that I hold one single value higher than any other. That is the freedom of choice. The thing about freedom is that is comes with an inherent restriction; personal responsibility. The apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians that "all things are permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial." Essentially, I have the freedom to do anything I want, but I have to know that I am responsible for my actions.
This is the area in which society is going quite the wrong direction. We are very comfortable proclaiming "I can do what I want..." The problem arises when things don't go quite to plan. Immediately we cry "who can I blame for this?" or something to that extent. It seems that we have even surpassed that point and have no desire to even place responsibility on the individual who causes the problems. If, as happened in Toledo at the beginning of the year, a driver who is intoxicated three times the legal limit enters the wrong way on the highway and kills five members of a family, the general consensus is that it's not his fault. Immediately after this accident, the general public and local authorities essentially shut down the bar at which he had been drinking. The mentality was that, "he should never have been served that much..."
While it is a tragic example, there is ultimately only one single person responsible. It has become politically incorrect to simply say, "that guy screwed up that time."

Single Value

After a conversation with my oldest friend who, if I continue with a blog, I'm sure will be referenced on many occasions, Nate convinced me to try my hand at writing a blog. I haven't given much thought to anything lately that I feel would concern most people.
I suppose I would have defined myself as a conservative the majority of my life, however, recently I have began to realize that my true opinions fall much more into the libertarian philosophy.
There is one single value that I hold more sacred than any other. That is the freedom of choice. I believe we were created with the God-given right to make choices for ourselves. I live in a country that was founded on this principle (we're on a slippery slope away now), I base my entire belief system on this principle, and I believe that the answers to most of the problems in society lie in this principle.
As I stated, I haven't really give any serious thought to many things recently, but I hope to share my views and thoughts if only with myself...