Do You Hear The People Sing?

Les Miserables has changed my life.

I walked into the movie, not planning on crying, and walked out with tear stained cheeks. I cried for Fantine as she gave away her pride to save her only child. I cried as she sang "I Dreamed a Dream" and longed for the life she thought she would have. I cried for Eponine and the love she had for Marius, who could never fully return her affection--I know exactly how that feels. I cried for the unfailing love that Jean Valjean had and the mercy he showed even to those who fought to bring him down. I cried for Cosette and Marius--well, mostly I just cried for myself because I want a man to pick me out of a crowd and love me just as dearly as I love him. I cried for all of the passionate men who died fighting for freedom and for Marius who lost all of his friends in the fight. 

But I mostly cried in the last scene when Valjean dies and joins the ranks of people on the barricade who had died in their war for freedom and who had finally found liberty with God. "Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of angry men? It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!" We have been singing this song of freedom since before the earth began and it will forever be the ageless fight. Behind every war is a longing for liberty to live and worship and exist as people wish. And on that barricade in the final scene were not just French revolutionaries. There were men, women, and children throughout time that have sacrificed their lives for this greater goal of liberty; for that is all that we truly yearn for. 

Liberty to dream a dream and freedom to break loose from the depths of hell to achieve it.