Heads-up: In case you’ve been waiting all this time for the 20th anniversary to come around in order to watch it, this post contains spoilers for The Shawshank Redemption.
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Zihuatanejo is a small coastal city that sits along the Gulf of Mexico. I can’t say for sure but I think that it may be most famous as the sanctuary for one of the greatest prison breaks in cinematic history. For those of you who don’t know the town or the movie reference (or just need a refresher) it’s from The Shawshank Redemption. This movie was released nearly twenty years ago and still seems to resonate with people today. While a movie about a man in prison may not immediately seem relatable, it does seem to hold some universal truths about hope, friendship and overcoming adversity.
I’ve always admired that enviable freedom of spirit that Andy Dufresne has, it just seems to flow out of the screen to the viewer. Even after he is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he never looses hope in the beauty of life, despite one injustice after another. Sometimes it can be hard to live that way, letting go of the bad can be tough when it seems to have an internal grip on you. That’s part of what makes Andy so easy to root for, you don’t want to see the darkness get in and take ahold of this hopeful man.
It’s later in the movie when, by every outward impression, it appears that our hero has given in and is broken. Of course, we learn this is not the case and our champion of spirit has been harboring a secret.
It all makes sense; all of the bad that has been chipping away at Andy keeps falling away because he’s been chipping away at something else – his cell wall. Hidden behind a large poster on his cell wall is a tunnel that he’s been digging for the last 19 ½ years. If only it were so apparent to all of us, how to chip away at the barrier that holds us back, often it is not so literal as a concrete wall.
Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. – Andy Dufresne
One stormy evening, Andy seizes the moment and leaves the captivity of his cell through his secret tunnel, which only leads part way to his goal. He then finds himself with the unenviable task of crawling through a 300-foot sewer pipe to reach freedom; the man is literally crawling through a river of crap to reach his goal. I’m sure we can all relate – albeit in a more philosophical sense.
He does all of this with the intention of reaching the city of Zihuatanejo. It is the place where he will leave behind everything that has ever held him back and everything that ever tried to break him. After his escape he does reach this city that he’s been envisioning for the last two decades, and he is free in every sense of the word.
You may not be in a literal prison but we’re all restricted by something. Even those that appear to have the most charmed of lives suffer from some barrier, whether self-inflicted, imagined or imposed on us by outside forces, it’s still something that holds us back from reaching our own Zihuatanejo.
This movie is a reminder that hope is important for dreams, especially secret ones. It’s what keeps us chipping away at the barrier between where we are now and where we want to be. Sometimes your future dreams can be hard to see but maybe that’s because the pathway to them is hidden behind a big damn poster.
This is part of my series, Journey of 1,865 Days, where I chronicle my desire to stop talking about the things I want to do and actually getting out there and doing them. Join me, won’t you?