Andy, a young banker, was wrongly killed his wife and lover and sentenced to life imprisonment. From then on, he began his long service in Shawshank Prison. This is the beginning of the film. Most prisoners serving sentences in Shawshank prison are sentenced to life imprisonment. The decades long prison life has long extinguished the prisoners' desire for freedom. They are used to reporting to the guards before going to the toilet every time, to working hard every day, and to losing freedom and hope.
In the film, there is a man who manages books, Lao Bu, who stays in prison until his twilight years. Finally, when he finally got the chance of parole, he committed suicide. In response to this, Andy's friend Red had a classic explanation for Shaw: these walls are really interesting. At first you hate it, then you get used to it. After a long time, you will still rely on it. This is called institutionalization.
Institutionalization, to put it bluntly, is your habit of the environment around you. It is a prison that imprisons your heart. Many of us have never broken the law or been in prison, but are we really free?
At the beginning, we wanted to hang our heads and prick our legs for the college entrance examination. If when you were young, someone told you that one day you would get up at six in the morning and go to bed at twelve in the evening, and there would always be endless papers to do and endless key points to memorize, would you think that would be unbearable? When this kind of day really comes, you have been crazy, depressed, and finally you get used to it, and even begin to miss it after entering college. The college entrance examination is actually our Shawshank prison. We gave up singing and dancing, novel games and our freedom. We are counting solid geometry behind the rise and fall of dynasties. I still don't know what they mean, but we all know that they are our salvation. It is not we who commit crimes, it is China's lifeless education system, but we who are in prison.
Later, we went to college, left prison and regained our freedom. There is no longer a high wall to restrict your freedom, and there is no longer the teacher's slapstick and the test questions' torment. Congratulations, you are out of prison, but why are you unhappy? You always thought that you were the one who stayed up all night thinking about a math problem, that you were the one who sat in a pile of reference books to analyze English grammar, and that you were the one who asked questions in a pile of students during the break. But when those days passed and you only existed in memory, you lost yourself. Who are you, who once defined yourself as a prisoner, after you are released from prison? From the beginning, you are a prisoner, or you are not only a prisoner, but also a long habit that you forget.
After graduation, we began to be busy with work and love, buying cars and houses. You finally have the money to buy an SLR, but you don't have the courage to quit your job to travel; You can finally stop saving money to buy gifts for your parents, but the number of times you go home is less and less; You can finally afford those luxury brands, but you don't have the surprise and joy of sneaking into the store. You are used to getting up early every day to go to work, high-heeled shoes and suits, paying the mortgage and shopping, yawning at the computer screen, and forgetting your dreams. Once again, you throw yourself into another Shawshank and let the habit build a high wall. You repeat what you "should" do day after day, but never ask your heart what it wants to do.