Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Random funde

Okay i lied, not exactly random :). I wrote this for something but it couldn't be used their so thought of putting it here. These are some funde from my all time favorite movie Shawshank Redemption. If someone reading this hasn't seen the movie then they should stop right here and go n watch the movie ! If one ever wants an example of motivation, persistence and self-belief, there's none better than one from the legendary movie 'The Shawshank Redemption'. The movie is based upon a novel 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' by Stephen King. The movie tells a story of Andy Dufresne who is incorrectly sentenced for two life imprisonments for killing his wife and her lover. The movie shows how inspite of all the difficult circumstances Andy Dufresne keeps the self-belief to not only plan his escape from prison but also motivate his friend Red to get out of it. The whole movie can be summarized by three of its dialogues (yeah it has too many good dialogues to choose from but still):

1. "Get busy living, or get busy dying.": If ever there was a list of most motivational quotes ever this will end up right at the top. The movie shows what all hardships Andy had to face, starting with her wife cheating on her, being sentenced falsely for murder of his wife and her lover, the hostile prison environment, regular beatings from his inmates and so on. But inspite of all these things he lived as if he was just living a "normal" life. He would carve chess pieces out of rocks to complete a chess board, build a great prison library, help a young inmate with his studies and not to mention helping out the guards with their tax returns and helping warden with his scams. When one is in difficult situtations(as Andy was) it is very easy to lose hope and focus, one starts to blame the other people, circumstances and infact everything for his current situation rather than trying to get over this difficult phase with complete dedication and persistence. This is what the other inmates like Red were doing, they had resigned to their situation by calling themselves "instutionalized", but Andy said that it all comes down to a simple choice - "Get busy living, or get busy dying". Either you can "die" by cribbing about the past and all the wrong things being done to you, or you can decide to "live" and find a way out of your troubles. The path to "die" maybe easier but it leads to nothing in the long run, while the path to "live" can be really difficult and long (around 20 years in this case for Andy), but the results are far greater (living a "free" life in this case). Everyone confronts diffcult situations in their lives, but its very important to keep your focus and persistence and get through those difficult periods. Overcoming each difficult situation only makes the you stronger.

2. "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of the things and no good thing ever dies": Hope. If you don't hope for anything you won't succeed in life. You have to dream in life, if you don't dream and hope for anything then you won't work to fullfil that dream and hence you probably won't succeed in life. So the key is to dream of something good, dream of something which makes you happy, dream of something you always want to do in life and then work with complete dedication towards achieving that dream. You might face a lot of difficulties in it, but that happy and successful feeling, you get when you achieve that dream is worth every ounce of effort. In the movie Andy dreamed that he will go to Zihautenejo, a town in Mexico. He went through all the hardships, "he crawled through half a mile of foul smelling shit to come out clean on the other side". It was this dream and his belief in that dream, that helped him get through each difficult circumstances and eventually get out of that prison and reach his destination.

3. "Salvation lies within": Basically you have to save you own ass :)

Yeah i know quite a serious talk, but its okay for once in a while i guess :D