TRYING OUTSIDE THE LINES

In today’s episode of things I’ve learned during this bout of (mostly) unemployment…

Andy Dufresne said, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” And maybe, for him, all those years ago, locked behind prison walls, and now, for me, trying not to get carried off by the river of despair, Tim Robbins delivered that line exactly as it should be.

My mom introduced me to The Shawshank Redemption so many years ago. Morgan Freeman’s voice reminds her of her older brother, and she’d always talk about it, but never at a time that it was on television. Until it was, and I fell in love with the story. She’d tease me, knowing that if I were home and knew the movie was on, no matter where in the story I caught it, I was watching it through. I knew how it ends, but I had to see the resolution again and again and again.

And I was smitten with beautiful Tim Robbins as Andy. Who, himself, is gorgeous, full stop. But as Andy, he was an incredible example of holding on to who you are no matter what life throws at you, no matter who the world tries to tell you you are. For some reason, my teenage self needed that picture of perseverance. And it was quite the picture.

Resignation is not an option. It’s ok to get tired, but once your strength has returned, fight for your life, and fight again. Friends worth having are ones that will help you, even when they don’t quite understand you. There are things, activities, rituals that keep us grounded in the midst of unbearable circumstances; they help us bear the trials and save our sanity more than we know.

The most sanity-saving, liberating scene to me is when Andy broadcasts a duet from Marriage of Figaro in the courtyard, even more than the resolution of the entire story. Because for a moment, everything stops – chaos stops, routine stops, the courtyard stops, and everyone looks up.

Red describes the moment like this: “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

Right now, today, many days, I need that reminder to look up. That phrase seems to show up often these days (the next intonation in my brain was Admiral Jean-Luc Picard). Because I can so easily get mired in my melancholy and forget that there is always a day to follow night. No, this part of my life does not look nearly at all how I envisioned it. I should be filled with purpose and doing what I love, making wonderful memories and living my best 40-year-old life. Instead, I find myself relating to Lizzie in Promising Young Women, befuddled at how everyone else seems to effortlessly wake, prepare and progress through their days.

But I too, like Lizzie, revel in those moments of light, the notes that carry me high above the turbulent sea of my depression and disappointment. Those glimpses are reminders that though I feel what I feel, beauty and grace and goodness are still mine in this world. Circumstances don’t change who I am, and who am I to let them? A difficult place in life doesn’t make me any less worthy or useful. The music ends as soon as I give up, so I can’t give up, no matter what it costs.

So today, I’m trying to remember that the absence of a steady check right now doesn’t mean that I don’t have skills or value or purpose. Even if it’s faint, the music plays as long as I hope, and I think I’m willing to hope as long as it takes.