There’s a line in the Shawshank Redemption:
“What the world has that penetrates all walls, it’s inside us.”
When I saw this movie, I thought it was the high-security Shawshank prison that kept the people inside.
When I look back again, I realize that the invisible prison is more terrible than the visible prison.
What really trapped everyone was not the inescapable Shawshank prison, but their weak mentality.
1
Dead set on the system
Be a caged bird in the status quo
At Shawshank, some longed for freedom outside the walls, while others were content with comfort inside.
Bruce, the librarian, clearly falls into the latter category.
He was released on parole, because of years of isolation, the outside world did not know what to do.
He felt suffocated by the constant flow of traffic on the street and the towering buildings.
In prison, he was a decent man with good manners.
The prisoners respected him, and the guards talked and laughed with him.
His day job was to cart books to prisoners.
In society, he is a down-and-out “superfluous person”.
After he was released from prison, he was assigned to work in a supermarket, but his aging slow action was always complained by customers, living in a state of high pressure, and he could not even sleep safely.
Living in fear every day, he committed suicide a year later.
There’s a great saying in the movie:
When you first go to prison, you hate the walls around you. Slowly, you get used to living in it; Eventually you find yourself having to live on it, and that’s called institutionalization.
This “institutionalization” is like an anesthetic that corrupts everyone’s mind.
In reality, many people have become such caged birds, and their lives are imprisoned between the square inches.
Some keep the iron rice bowl that they think they do not think about progress, some people think that they can mess around for a lifetime, but how much comfort they enjoy in this way will pay how much price in the future.
Whether it is institutionalized does not depend on the environment, but on the state of mind.
Andy’s been in Shawshank for 27 years, and he’s never been out of touch.
He used to be a banker, so many years in prison, learned financial knowledge did not fall behind, but by helping the prison guards tax and financial management, constantly update skills.
With state subsidies, he helped the library buy many books and newspapers, and he also used reading as a window to learn about the constant changes in the outside world.
Years quiet for a long time, life will become a deep pool of stagnant water.
Only by running forward can we reach the magnificent sea like a great river.
2
Surrender to fate
The heart is dead, the lamp is out, and the flea is under the cover
There is a flea experiment in psychology, when you put a glass hood on a flea, the flea will hit the top of the hood every time.
After a period of time, even after the glass cover is removed, the flea will accept its fate and will no longer jump above this height.
A lot of people live like this, bowing to cruel fate, their hearts like dead ashes.
The contrast between Rhett’s two parole hearings in the film is impressive.
The first time was Red’s 20th year in prison.
When he faced the five judges, his hand kept fiddling with his hat, probably felt wrong, hid his hand behind him, or felt wrong, and put his hand to his side, trying to hide his embarrassment.
At that time, the fire of hope in his heart was still burning, and he longed to get out of prison.
The second time, it was Red’s 30th year in prison.
His mentality has undergone an earth-shaking change, and he believes that hope is useless, and it is better to accept fate.
In front of the judges, he perfunctorily recited the “lines” he said 10 years ago, and no longer expected admiration.
Predictably, he was denied parole again.
During the long days in prison, Red stopped fighting and resigned himself to his fate.
Inamori Kazuo once mentioned the power of mentality: Everything in life begins with the heart and ends with the heart.
What you believe, will happen, the heart of the thought, must have an echo.
The same in the cage, each prisoner heart like withered, but Andy heart like grass and trees, born to the sun.
When it came to the future, Rhett and others sniffed that life as far as they could see was dark.
But Andy is different, although sentenced to life in prison, but full of hope.
He hopes to one day go to the small town of Cihuatanyho in southern Mexico, open a hotel, drink beer against the sea breeze, and breathe the free air.
Because of this mentality, even if he was targeted by the “three sisters” of perversion, humiliated and mocked, he never gave up on himself.
Even though the road out of prison was tortuous and difficult, he did everything he could to make the plan go through.
Andy echoes the classic line from the movie: “Some birds are just not meant to be caged because their desire to fly never dies.”
Fate, half in the day, half in man.
Once you bow your knees to life, life loses the opportunity to turn over.
3
Just want to take shortcuts in life
Can not endure the bitter, become a chrysalis in the cocoon
The Harvard School of Psychology has gone deep into American prisons to study the psychology of prisoners.
They found that whether it is pickpockets who pick locks and steal cars, or robbers who seize money by car, there is almost one thing in common:
Just want to take shortcuts, just want to get something for nothing, no patience for the cause, no perseverance.
Tommy had the same thing in him.
He’s young, but he doesn’t work, he steals for a living, he makes his home in prison.
He often stares in rich areas, breaking into homes and stealing color televisions or items of value.
After coming to Shawshank, Tommy learned that Andy had helped fellow inmates get higher education, and also hoped Andy could help him.
But when it comes to studying, Tommy can’t stay calm and can’t bear to be annoyed.
When he learned 26 letters, he soon frowned and groaned.
When I was doing the test paper, I could not help but be upset when I met the problem, and directly rolled the test paper into a paper ball and threw it into the paper basket.
Tommy was a bright boy in the eyes of his fellow inmates, but he never put in the hard work to get down to business.
Tommy’s mindset is the mindset of many of us.
Eager to become a person, but not down to earth to cultivate their own, in an attempt to leap to heaven.
Hope to wealth freedom, but can not endure hardships, and can not stand tired, play a variety of ideas to make fast money.
Always want to take a shortcut, go to the end may be hopeless.
Just like a chrysalis in a cocoon, if you just want to take advantage of it and break the shell through external forces, then you can never transform into a butterfly.
Andy put forward this point of view: “If a person knows how to use time, even if only a little time at a time, little by little accumulation, can do a lot of things.”
He believes in the power of perseverance.
When he wanted to build a library and apply for funding, old Bu advised him not to waste his time.
He did not give up, and kept writing letters to the state Senate asking for funds, even though all the letters went unanswered, he kept writing them every day.
Everyone thought Andy was being stupid because he was doing something impossible.
Instead, the state Senate ended up giving him $200 and a donation of old books and junk.
When Andy asks Red for a pickaxe, Red never thought he would dig a hole in the ground to escape prison, joking that it would take him at least 600 years to dig a hole.
But in the end, Andy dug a little bit of dirt every day, and it took 19 years to dig the tunnel.
Work to the extreme, to the end, the mountains can be moved, the sea can be flat.
In this world, there is no straight to the top of the ladder, only a step by step arch the death of the rugged path.
Every step we take will bring us closer to the life we want, but every step we save will double the payment.
The British writer Clive Barker once said:
“In America, every family owns two books. One is the Bible. The other is Stephen King’s Shawshank Redemption.”
The story told in the Shawshank Redemption is not only the story of Andy and Red, but also the story of you and me.
It tells the world a truth: if the heart is a cage, everywhere is a cage.
In this world, can imprison us, only ourselves.
When we come out of the prison of our heart, that is the beginning of power.
