Our own "Shawshank's"...

"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.