Tomorrow night, millions of Americans will gather in backyards, on rooftops, and in open fields to watch fireworks light up the sky. There will be burgers on the grill, kids running through sprinklers, and cold drinks in hand. It will feel easy and ordinary, the way good things often do when we've had them long enough.

But freedom was never ordinary. It was bought.

And the price paid for it is something worth stopping to think about, even if just for a moment, before the first firework goes up.

The signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1776.

When the 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, they weren't making a symbolic gesture. They were committing what the British Crown considered high treason, a crime punishable by death.

Many of them lost everything. Five were captured by the British and tortured. Twelve had their homes burned. Nine died from wounds or hardships during the war. Two lost their sons in battle. Several died in poverty.

These weren't desperate men with nothing to lose. Most were wealthy, educated, and respected. They had comfortable lives. They chose to risk all of it, not for themselves, but for an idea: that all men are created equal, and that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not granted by a king. It is inherent.

That sentence changed the world. It still does.

Photo: Freedom Foundation

The founding generation lit the fire. But every generation since has had to tend it.

In the Civil War, more than 600,000 Americans died, many of them fighting to make the promise of the Declaration real for people it had not yet included. In World War II, over 400,000 Americans gave their lives to stop a darkness that would have consumed the free world. In Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and dozens of conflicts in between, men and women put on a uniform and stepped into harm's way so that the people back home could keep living the life they'd always known.

Most of them were young. Most of them were scared. Most of them went anyway.

That's what sacrifice looks like. Not the dramatic movie version. The quiet, terrifying, ordinary version where a 19-year-old kid decides that something bigger than himself is worth more than his own comfort, or his own safety, or his own life.

It's easy to take freedom for granted when you've never lived without it. So let's name a few of the things that were paid for in blood and are still ours today.

You can say what you think. You can worship how you choose, or not at all. You can own property. You can start a business. You can fail at that business and start another one. You can move across the country on a whim. You can raise your kids the way you believe is right. You can disagree with your government out loud, in public, with your name attached.

None of that is guaranteed anywhere else on earth the way it is here. And none of it was free.

I think about this a lot, especially as a father. What do I owe the people who paid for the life I get to live?

I don't think the answer is guilt. I think the answer is use it.

Use the freedom. Build something. Pursue something. Take the risks that are available to you because someone else took a much bigger one so you could have them. Don't sleepwalk through a life that was purchased at enormous cost.

One of the most uniquely American freedoms is the freedom to build your own economic future. Nobody tells you what job to take, what business to start, or what ceiling you're allowed to reach. That's not true in most of the world. Here, the only thing standing between you and a different life is the decision to build one.

This 4th of July, enjoy the fireworks. Hug your family. Eat the burger. But also take a second to think about what you're going to do with the freedom you've been given.

Because the best way to honor a sacrifice is to make it worth something.

The One Funnel Away Challenge is a 30-day intensive that teaches you exactly how to build an online business from scratch, even if you've never done it before. Thousands of Americans have used it to build the financial freedom that matches the personal freedom they already have.

This 4th of July, make a decision that your future self will thank you for.