You don’t need a movie with fiery action and breathtaking special effects to make an impression on your soul. Sometimes, all you need is a simple yet invigorating story that makes you feel beautiful about the life and lifts your spirit up. Shawshank Redemption does it, every time, easily!
20 years and counting, The Shawshank Redemption still remains that one movie that surprises me with new elements every time I watch it, making it an encompassing affair. The captivating movie has its roots in the phenomenal expressions of the actors, experiential motifs, exuberant dialogues, the lifeless eyes of the prisoners with myriad questions and the mighty spirit of the protagonist (Andy & Red). The dark drama has its own moments and while you watch it you see a light within yourself and a motivation that stays.
Here are the most important lessons one can learn from The Shawshank Redemption, enough to change one’s life.
Hope is a good thing: Yes, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies. This one-liner summarize the whole journey of a human being. You survive on the hopes. It’s the hope that gets you through the bad time and it’s the hope that fueled Andy to get out of the prison even after 19 years! Never get used to ideas, be hopeful and one day you will find your way out.
keep sailing. It’s not always that life gives you road full of rose petals, sometimes you have to walk on the uneven thorny road to reach the desired place.
Persistence is Strength: No reason to deny this fact. Andy started writing letters to state government to improve the prison library only to hear ‘no’ every time but he didn’t give up and finally after years of trying he got some money and a promise of $500 to be donated to the library. Bravo! How many of us would even care to try after two or three disappointments in life.
And his true achievement was to get his way to freedom. Andy digs the tunnel with little hammock every day for 19 years to get out of the prison that otherwise would have taken 600 years. A marvelous feat.
Well, a determined soul can do wonders. Keep trying and let your determination and that tiny dream to never fade. Sometimes you need to flow through the river of filth to come out cleaner.
Keep yourself busy: Get busy living or get busy dying. You can choose. Keeping yourself busy when life is turbulent makes you a stronger person. It will let you accept the reality and won’t force itself on you while the later one will bruise your soul and leave you lifeless.
Don’t mere survive, do justice to yourself. The hard time has to be dealt with an attitude. keeping up with it elegantly will make you stronger. Make efforts, constant efforts to remind yourself that, “I am stronger than this”.
Do not detach from outside world:
The scene where Brooks asks permission to use loo from his employer is heart- breaking and riveting. The portrayal of a fragile old man’s character seemed so real that when he commits suicide, everything becomes dark for few seconds. “Brooks was here” on the wall, depict what 50 years in a four-walled prison can do and even the lust for freedom couldn’t do any good.
Keep dreaming for the good days that will come in life one day. Don’t let the showers of the hard time to wash away the hope and the determination. Keep talking to people around, experience it from their eyes and make sure to be there, in your world, one fine day.
This classic piece of art is all about hopes, aspiration, perseverance and the ruthless ability of the time to changes a human being, slowly and steadily. It’s about that undeniable patience and the eternal confidence to surpass the bad time. It’s about that tiny dream to see the blue water. It’s about the beauty of relationship, loyalty and friendship that bond people, even in conventional walls of a prison. It’s about every emotion a human is made up of!
