My Own Prison

Saw The Shawshank Redemption last night. I guess there's nothing to say about that movie that everyone doesn't already know. That movie moves me deep down. It's not that I think about Andy getting convicted for something he never did, not about Brooks who committed suicide because fifty years had robbed him of everything but the pretence of life......it's more than that.....

The movie stands out to me because in my darkest despair, it has, quite literally given me a new hope. It's the reaffirmation of an old belief that as long as you have something to work towards, nothing can slow you down....nothing at all. Not people, not rules, not even rivers of shit. But the moment you resign yourself to living within walls, you might as well kill yourself, for you're no longer really alive.

Most walls aren't made for us by others. We build them ourselves. We make our own prisons and then become too afraid to peer out into the open.....too afraid to think of what we may achieve if only we could let ourselves go......too afraid to believe that anything exists beyond the walls we've built. We become too afraid to dream. It's like a bird in a cage....after a while, even if you free it, it can't fly.....it can't any more....because it doesn't want to....it should have died in there....

Some people are born to live in prisons. Their prisons are made before they even know what freedom feels like...some people decide it's best to stay in a prison.....for this way lies security. And some reach points where they find they've walked into a prison. They're the ones that try to break out...and most of them give up after a while.....some just decide to back away when faced with that river of shit.....could you go on?

It's not easy swimming against the tide when the tide constitutes everything and everyone other than you.....we can all do with a little help at times.....and that's where you need to have it within....another line from Shawshank, "Salvation lies within". How true. You can find it in a lot of ways - music, for instance....but you need the conviction more than anything else; the conviction that what you strive for is worth the stuff you need to go through to get there......

Each of us has his or her own river of shit to crawl through. Very few of us will try....fewer still will make it through.....let's see.....

As they say so rightly, "Get busy living....or get busy dying".....damn right.....

What's a real friend?
Someone with whom an hour spent in perfect silence is the best harmony......