Talk Tuesday: I Seem To Be Obsessing over Shawshank Redepmtion

"Get busy living... or get busy dyin'." - Shawshank Redemption

Would you believe that I have not watched the Shawshank Redemption recently? I haven't. It's true. I just stumbled on some TVTropes articles that linked back to Shawshank's article and found that the story seemed to resonate.

But, back to the quote. I've mentioned previously, that whatever we do with our every day, that is what we have chosen to die for. What you do, is who you choose to be. Who you think of yourself as in your head means nothing, what you put done in the pages of life by your actions is who you are. And most of us are not writing stories that we would want to read, to say nothing of anyone else.

And, yes, the Hungry Empire wouldn't function if we all lived that way and nobody waited tables and worked in factories and stocked shelves. And yes, civilization wouldn't function is nobody sold crap and swept up and manned the assembly lines. And I know that I am writing this on a computer that wouldn't be feasible without those things. But are those things worth living a life you would not choose to relive if given the chance?

Seriously, this is a question you must ask yourself. Is this life, the one you caffinate and medicate your way through, worth the price you pay to get it? Are these toys and technologies worth the price you pay in the life that you keep deferring?

So yes, you need to get busy living. And you need to examine the life you are in fact choosing to live. Because every life you choose, causes all possible other lives you might have lived to die. You only get to choose one life (assuming the Buddhists and the Hindus aren't on to something), so choose one that you can look back and say- yes, that was worth dying to achieve.

Otherwise, you aren't busy living. You are busy dying for somebody else's life.

And hey...

Life is Short.
Work is Crap.
Join my Cult.

Theory Thursdays: How to Talke your Life into your own Hands

Here's a Question: if we are all serfs and implicitly bonded to the land, how do we take our lives into our own hands as instructed by the first part of the Second Song of the Song of Seven.

Well. I'm going to suggest we look to the example set by one fictional gentleman by the name of Andy Dufresne, in the movie Shawshank Redemption.

Andy is convicted of a crime he insists he didn't commit. He is deprived of freedom and sent to a prison that one might charitably call a hell hole. He is very effectively deprived of all relevant freedom. How then, does he take his life into his own hands?

He does it little by little. One small decision at a time. One little victory and then another. He fights back against the inmates trying to abuse him. And then he bargains with the guards like an equal, and squeezes a little more control of his own life out of them.

"Sir, do you trust your wife?"

He risks death to obtain a little more life. Little step by little step. All of them scary, all of them hard, none of them big until the very very end.

And that first taste of true freedom, when your life really is in your own hands completely, that is the last step on a heroes journey most people will never dare make. Its safe being a slave. Being a warrior is hard.

But take a step. Just one. Take a step.

And then take another.

Life is Short.
Work is Crap.
Join my Cult.