In the film The Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freeman’s character explains the concept of institutionalization to his fellow inmates:
“He’s just institutionalized, that’s all…Man’s been here fifty years. This place is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man, an educated man. A librarian. Out there, he’s nothing but a used-up old con with arthritis in both hands. Couldn’t even get a library card if he applied…These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. After long enough, you get so you depend on ‘em. That’s ‘institutionalized’…They send you here for life, and that’s just what they take…”
The basic idea is simple: those things that trap us, that hinder us, even those things that hurt us can become an awkward source of comfort to us. We find ourselves electing to continue pursuing negative behavioral patterns, not because they achieve the results we want, but because we know those patterns and the familiarity has come to make us feel safe.
It’s weird, isn’t it, how we could end up propelling patterns and behaviors we say we hate just because the idea of change is uncomfortable? And yet, we all do it. We all persist in certain ways of thinking, even after we’ve discovered them to be ineffective or destructive, because we don’t know what else to do. And really, that’s just another way of saying we’re scared—scared to find some other thing to do, some other way to think. We’d rather just keep doing what we’re doing and keep coping with the crap we’ve already learned to cope with rather than stepping out or stepping up.
I find this in myself at alarming degrees. I know, for example, what some of my great struggles are. And some of them I work on. Some of them I just let alone. I choose not to work on them. Oh, I’ll tell you what a struggle those areas of my life are, how difficult they can be, but really they’re no struggle at all because I’m not fighting. I’m just coasting, dissatisfied but cocooned in an illusion of safety, and this keeps me inactive.
It’s breaking the cycle that’s hard—hard because it will hurt. And don’t let anyone tell you it won’t hurt. It will! It’ll hurt like hell! Addiction, a college professor of mine used to say, is the avoidance of necessary pain. I believe all unhealthy patterns, be they “addictions” or not, are the avoidance of necessary pain. To embrace health, to do a good thing, a right thing, is to count the cost (there’s always a cost) and consider it worth it. You will hurt, but you will grow. This is the paradox.
When Morgan Freeman’s character finally makes it out of Shawshank, he almost gives in to the depression and the fear. He’s been sheltered by the prison system for so long, he doesn’t know how to be free. And freedom is scary. But he finds the inner strength to face those fears and live beyond them. May you and I do the same.
Addiction is the avoidance of necessary pain. I think I’ll file that one away for good use! Thanks!
RAY
left by ray on 07.12.2007 at 9:42 am