Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.

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Shawshank Redemption

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I’ve written about The Shawshank Redemption at Wisdom and Life.  Simply click the link to read the previous columns.  One of the reasons I connect so deeply with this move is how Andy Dufresne escapes Shawshank:

When Andy Dufresne escapes Shawshank Prison he must crawl to freedom through five hundred yards of sh-t smelling foulness I can’t even imagine. (This line is a voiceover from  Red, Andy’s friend, played by Morgan Freeman)

I see Andy’s escape from prison as a correlation to my own escape from my emotional prison.  We all are trapped by some emotional turmoil from our past.  We must decide if we want to stay there or do the work of escaping that turmoil.  We all have shit from the past that we can either carry with us or crawl through to freedom just as Andy did.  I see Andy LITERALLY crawling through the muck as a symbol for all of us who carry our own emotional baggage with us.  We either continue with the baggage of yesterday or we shake off the shackles, we clean the muck off of us.

I cleaned the muck, I shook off the shackles, I left the baggage behind.

I watched the last half hour of this movie last month as it is the BEST part of the movie, when Andy escapes.  This passage above comes from a note that Andy leaves his friend, Red in a box when Red is released from Shawshank Prison.  I heard the line every time I watched the movie but I never really listened to it.  I listened to it and took it in last month.

Hope is all we have.
Hope in a better world.
Hope in a better life.

Without hope, there is no reason to continue.  The other word that relates to hope is faith.  Without these two things in my life where would I be?  We all need to believe in something,  We all need to believe our lives will continue to improve. That’s hope.

Believing:
That’s faith.

Without belief, hope and faith I wouldn’t be where I am today.  These are the most important traits I have.  And as I said above it’s why this movie resonates so deeply with me.

Do you have any movies or books that define who you are?  Let me know in the comments below.

Be Happy!  Be Well!  Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
—
Chris

Once you realize that life is eternal,
That our souls our eternal,
That we return to light and physical over and over;

We then lose all our distress
We then lose all our fear of dying.  For there truly is no end.