"Get busy living or get busy dying."
~ The Shawshank Redemption
"It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head."
~ Sally Kempton
We all are in some way or another within our own Shawshank’s;
we become prisoners to our fear of the unknown and love of the known. As such
within our epistemological paradigm we are locked within our minds capacity for
comprehension of reality.
Think of it this way - as an Inuit who was born and lived
her whole life in the arctic cold, spending winters in an igloo just as her
parents and grandparents had done before her. Her reality is that which she
knows from what she has experienced around her and has been told. She is unaware
that if she would walk south there is warmth and difference unlike anything she
experienced and yet there is an epistemological leap that must be taken.
Yet, how does one know that there is even a leap to be
taken? When does the inquisitiveness to question even begin or where does it
come from?
Is it an inherent distinctiveness of nature in some to
journey, to be restless, to need to move beyond where they are?
Perhaps, that inkling or spark or beam of light shining
through even so dimly the cracks of our prisons is enough to prod one to move,
to think there is a way out of where one finds oneself?
The fear of the unknown, the uncertainty inherently involved
in any journey is more than enough to keep most in the comfortable unease of
their personal Shawshank. A time of disruption or crisis may be the only way
that one can garner enough resolve to move beyond, to fashion a means of escape
from the prison one is in.
It is only when on
the other side, free, does one fully grasp where it is one has been and come
from. Then the warmth, beauty and tranquility of a hard fought freedom can one
find peace.
