By Samuel Strait, Reporter at Large – January 14, 2021 I haven't watched much Television lately because it seems every other sentence contains the phrase "We are keeping you safe". It is almost as if the word "safe" is synonymous with allowing a person to live for ever. Of course, at least I hope it is so, that we haven't gotten so comfortable with the word "safe" that some how that constitutes an everlasting life. Naturally, no one thinks that they will live forever except maybe in the worlds of fantasy or science fiction, and does all they can to prolong their life. Caution is one thing, but to live life in a cocoon of "safety", is it really living life? I suppose that is for each person living to make the choices in life to figure that one out. It should be that the individual and not the world we currently live makes, that choice. I think right now there is plenty of evidence out there that suggests that this blanket of "safety" has become a bit restrictive and limiting for those of us that have a different interpretation of what is considered safe. It has become so stifling and over bearing that it has become synonymous with imprisonment. We now have ordinary citizens cloaked in the word "safe" playing in their proverbial sandbox exercising pseudo and sanctimonious preachings about what "safe" should mean to everyone. This without doubt begs the question "Who are they or anyone else allowed to define "safe" for the world. It should now have become evident, for anyone with a brain, that the world has not become any less safe than it was a year ago. People are going to become sick with Covid-19 no matter how "safe" you try to be. It wasn't any different when the Common Flu was infecting a broad segment of the population every year, except this year naturally. Vaccines were never totally effective, and only those people whose definition of "safe" might have worn masks and social distanced in the past. If you happened to be ill, you self quarantined. I think by now we as a nation are well beyond the idea that Covid-19 is a death sentence. Maybe it just might be time to allow those that have a different interpretation of "safe" get back to living. Throw open the doors to this artificial prison and begin to live life as it was meant to be lived.