What I learned from Shawshank

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

1. No good thing ever dies.  Hope is special, and it gives power over challenges.  When everything else is stripped away from you, you can still hold on to hope.  It can only be taken when you give it up. 

2. Salvation lies within [the Bible].  It's a great book with lots of answers if you haven't read it.
3. Pay attention during Earth Science, lest you pick up a Horse Apple in mistake of Soapstone or Alabaster.

4.  Everybody in prison is "innocent."  Okay, perhaps not, but when we focus on a person's fault, they are never allowed to move beyond that stigma.  We rarely allow ourselves to learn about someone beyond their actions.

5. Sometimes you have to crawl through a mile of crap to come out clean on the other side.  The best stuff in life rarely comes simply.  Just because you're in the worst of it doesn't make it the end of it.

6.  Stay awake during Earth Science.  You don't want to be the guy who mistakes a Horse Apple for Soap Stone.  Education can prevent many embarassing moments from occuring.

7. It's possible to make a movie that is better than the book.  Yes, this is a Steven King short story!

8. Your talents can be useful wherever life takes you.  I struggled finding relevance when I made a radical career change where my old skills didn't lend themselves in the same capacity as they had for the other job.  Though it took some time, those skills and past experiences provided a unique point of view in problem-solving that no one else had. 

9.  Persistance is crucial to reaching a goal.  Hopefully it will not take you a 100 years, but it takes time to slowly carve your life the way you want it to turn out.

10.  Get busy living or get busy dying.  No further explanation needed.

Summary:
Why not start with the Shawshank Redemption?  It is my favorite movie for a number of reasons.  I enjoy prison genre film and who doesn't love a movie Morgan Freeman narrates?  The guy could captivate our attention reading the phone book.  It's a truly great example of how movies can instill hope in a powerful way.  I think of the prisoners standing in the yard as "The Marriage of Figaro" plays overheld and think about what that moment meant to them.  I still tear up (now as a Pavlovian response) anytime I hear the closing score to this movie.