The Lost Art of Perseverance

 I first watched Shawshank redemption about a decade back because of the hype, and didn't really take in all the messages it had to share.


I knew I had to rewatch it. Few years back I had the opportunity to do that but it was 2am when my friends put it on, and I just fell asleep a few minutes in - I know, Sacrilegious!

To redeem myself of that sin, I was finally able to watch it today! (thanks to a reel about the movie that reminded me of it)

It truly is a moving movie in many ways. What grabbed my attention though, was how long it takes for "hope" to do its thing - the years of perseverance...and boy can it be demotivating in regard to wanting to hold onto hope.

Good things take time but bad comes swiftly. Creation takes time, but destruction is quick. That which is good for the body usually tastes bad, and bad... almost always good.

I've questioned this nature of reality often, why we free-fall into bad, but we have to climb a ladder against natural forces towards good...It's almost as if the natural supports the bad and is hostile towards good.

Hold on to this thought, we're going to digress for a bit

The worst thing digital advancement has done to us is give us the ability to create things faster. Yes, yes, obvious question, why is that bad ?

Because it made us lose an important part of humanity - perseverance in creation. Perseverance developed in us a value for things and for the people involved in creation, because there was a lot of effort that went into creation and delivery. Now, there's lesser effort in creation, and delivery has been dehumanized(by expecting machine like pace from humans) - which has resulted in lesser value being attached to things and people.

This also shifted our perspective from 'our collective existence is valuable and we grow together by maintaining a sustainable cycle' to 'how can I be served - to hell with sustainability and others - they're responsible for themselves'

It will be a slow change, but a generation or two later, we'll be in a highly advanced society, with more humans and lesser humanity - there are signs of it today, but it'll become normal then.

Back to the main point: The side note helped me realise that perhaps the effort to be good helps maintain the value for good things and people. If there is no effort, then there's no value, if there's no value, then we stop seeing the need to be collectively good, ultimately reality will become - to each their own, do what you must to satisfy yourself - to hell with others.

Such a reality would soon lead to the doom of humans.

Pss...pss...why do we value things based on the effort we put on it. Stop it brain. That's a question for another time.

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