Last night my middle son asked, “Can I watch The Shawshank Redemption?”
“Um, sure,” I said.
Yeah, it’s rated R, but I have the movie memorized and knew when to tell him to close his eyes.
So we watched it. I’ve probably seen it well over a dozen times (enough times that I can finally spell “Andy Dufresne”). And I could see it that many more times. At one point, I wondered if Andy was doing Chris Epps’ books. But I digress.
My son is particularly good at chess, so I mentioned Andy’s strategy. How he never gave up hope. How he was playing chess while the warden was playing checkers. Yes, it was unfair Andy was in jail. And when he was attacked. That the young convict he was helping (and could have proved his innocence) was murdered. But Andy didn’t quit, whine or fall into the fetal position of self pity. He had a plan and saw the whole board. He looked for small victories and continued to have hope.
(Spoiler Alert in case you are one of the three people who haven’t seen it). The movie’s payoff is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Andy’s crawling through a 1/4 mile of sewage is such a powerful metaphor for what he experienced in his life. But at the end, when he rose with his arms in the air — well, that was indeed sweet victory.
He got the warden in checkmate and walked away a free man.
As the credits rolled, my son looked at me and said, “Get busy living or get busy dying.”
I patted him on the back and said, “And hope is a good thing, maybe the best of thing, and no good thing ever dies.”