I ♥ my prison?

Do I love my prison walls?

No, I’m not serving 15-25 for armed robbery like the loser on the 11:00 news. But am I doing time for a paycheck in a cubicle? Am I serving 5 years to life in a relationship I’m unwilling to improve? Or maybe life without parole with an addiction?

If I stay unhappy in a relationship instead of improving it, I’m in a lonely prison. If I cling to an addiction, I’m tethered to that habit. If I stay at a job that’s not right for me, I’m limited not just in what I can be, but who I can be.

Why do we stay? Why don’t we forsake the addiction and live free, abandon our selfish unhappiness and love freely, and ditch the comfortable unhappiness of unfulfilling work?

In Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freeman observes how a prison inmate goes through the stages of accepting his fate. “First you hate these walls. Then you get used to them. Then you start to depend on them. That’s when you’re institutionalized.”

Yes, there’s security in prison walls. There’s safety and comfort. Not that we’d admit it, but the habits we have, the lives we live, even the parts we hate, become the things we depend on. Even worse, they become part of our identity.

Like the man who enters prison certain that he’s innocent, that he’s different from everybody else in there, and he won’t rest till he gets out. Enough years pass, and he thinking of himself as an inmate for life. He cannot imagine life on the outside. If he does get out, briefly, he finds a way back in, quickly.

The things that keep you in also keep the world out. You become accustomed to the safety, the security of the routine. You depend on your walls to protect you. Do you realize they also imprison you?

What are the prison walls you’ve come to depend on?

Do you ♥ your prison?
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