Having nothing left to lose is a kind of freedom. You are then free to act without being tied to anything. That's exactly what it's like in moments of great danger, and it's one of the reasons that some people seek out dangerous situations...they want that brief taste of freedom.

To have many valuable possessions can deprive a person of freedom. You have to then guard those things, provide storage for them, pay for upkeep and insurance, worry about theft, and so on.

There's all kinds of stuff in the New Testament and in most spiritual teachings about this kind of thing..."store up treasures in heaven" (within yourself) where thieves, moths, and rust cannot go...

And to quote Dylan in Like A Rolling Stone...

"When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose, you're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal"

Maybe Kristofferson was thinking of that when he wrote those lines. Maybe not. It was a good song he did, but I got kind of tired of it over the years (Bobby McGee, that is), after too many requests to play it by various well-meaning people.

- LH