“These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.”
The above lines are from a movie called The Shawshank Redemption. In case you haven’t watched it, I strongly recommend that you do. There have been many great movies I have watched through the years but none stand out to me as much as this one.
I watched the movie a long time ago but was just recently involved in the discussion about it. It struck me that though there were exceptional messages throughout the story none indulged me as much as the one you just read above. In the movie there is a prison inmate who commits suicide after he gets out of prison on bail. He isn’t happy he is free rather miserable of the newly found freedom and just couldn’t bear it anymore. That notion was something which intrigued me the most.
There is a line in the famous sitcom, “The Office”, that no matter where we are human beings have the miraculous ability to make that place a home. Now isn’t that true? So is it in Physics by the way. The famous Law of Inertia, Every body wants to preserve the state in which it exists. Afterall, we really like our comfort zones, don’t we? And just how beautifully the movie explains it through the concept of institutionalization. The concept of institutionalization refers to the process by which long-term prisoners become so accustomed to the routine of the prison world that they struggle to adapt to life outside of prison when they are eventually released. People become so accustomed to the structured and predictable life within the prison that the freedom and uncertainties of the outside world are overwhelming.
However, doesn’t it somehow feel like this entire concept is relatable to every one of us. I believe all of us are institutionalized in one way or the other. This is what I have seen people doing repeatedly. We somehow adapt to our surroundings even when we don’t like it. Then it becomes a routine and before you realize it you are trapped in your own mind building up limitations and putting yourself behind bars of a structured ideology. What we don’t realize is how easy is it for those walls to get so rigid with time that any change for the greater good isn’t welcomed inside.
When I was young, I heard a story. There used to be a rope to tie elephants in a farm. Once a man was surprised to see a fully grown elephant be tied by the rope it could easily free itself from given its strength. However, it remains bound to it. Looking at this, he asks the person catering to them, “why don’t you use a stronger rope? These elephants can just free themselves and run away?” To which the person tells him that they don’t because they have been tied like this since they were young. They tried at first but upon failing multiple times now think they can’t do it even when they are fully grown and have greater strength.
So are we the elephants? And even when we are aren’t we tied with the strings we have ourselves attached? Sometimes because it gives us a sense of belongingness and sometimes because it is easier to follow through with a preconceived notion of what it could all be than to try to unravel into what remains mysterious.
But every time you come across an opportunity to be more than what you have learned to be; grab it. Don’t let it overwhelm you. Don’t listen to people who tell you life is any less than perfect or let them disturb your vision of the world in rose tinted glasses.
Because
“hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” (The Shawshank Redemption)
So I hope you don’t let the world or even your prison world convince you to settle down for any less of a world you can have. Everyone deserves to be happy. Remember you live life not go through with it checking boxes or fitting into moulds to please anyone.
