The story is originally by Stephen King, a storyteller with a gift of highlighting the horrors of ordinary living, in this case, a man imprisoned for a crime that he didn't commit. I won't rehash the whole story. If I discover it playing on TV, I'll sit down and watch it. I own the DVD. I know I have the short story in a paperback somewhere in my basement. It's beautifully constructed with an ending that is *insert chef's kiss here* ideal for anyone with a desire for true justice. The message to get busy living or get busy dying comes up when an elderly prisoner is released and cannot adapt to the complexitities of the modern world. He became "institutionalized," so accustomed to living behind bars that he became comfortable. I know the message isn't strictly about prison, but life, and how easy it is to become comfortable and complacent to the point of limiting one's potential. The dream stays forever out of reach, even if the person leaves the literal or figurative prison, they still live like they're behind bars.
I grew up with a mother who often seemed discontent. Her imagined future usually included some castle in the sky, and I kept watching that castle get crushed. The example that stands out the most was her plan for when my dad retired. They were supposed to split the time between the U.S. and Sardinia, her original home. Not in the plan: my dad dying before he reached retirement.
She adjusted quickly, and still decided to move back to Sardinia, with the goal of living with her own mother, and just as quickly that goal was dashed, too. My father died in February and Nonna followed him in April the same year. I think she was devastated, but somehow kept it together until she could drop me off at West Point that summer. She also seemed tired of her own tragedy, saying she didn't want to keep telling a sob story about how her husband died, and her mother died two months later.
She did move back to Sardinia for a few years, but she relied heavily on one of her brothers to show her around and help negotiate deals. Now the castle in the sky became a house that she wanted to have built. The land was picked out, on a bluff overlooking the crashing waves of the Mediterranean sea, but there was always red tape, and no clear explanation of how to speed up the process. Frustrated, she returned to the U.S. after three years to live near my sister. This was convenient because it meant my young nephew and niece had their grandmother nearby, and my sister and her husband, both active duty service members could get a break. Then, like any unnegotiated arrangment, resentment built. She lived in that home for fourteen years, long after my sister and her family moved on to a different station.
Finally, she proposed moving in with me. Keeping a house was a headache, and in her mind, pooling resources in a bigger home meant saving money and gaining space. She envisioned a detached apartment over a two car garage. You know, the kind of thing that's very common in movies and TV and incredibly uncommon in a cookie cutter suburban neighborhood. She wound up with a large bedroom, a shared bathroom and claim to the home office on the main floor.
She often ceded what she actually wanted to have the comfort of living with others. I understand that but it broke my heart. I felt she allowed herself to get old after moving in with us, and maybe something in her gave up. I asked her if she was happy once and she simply said, "I'm not unhappy."
Being "not unhappy" sounds like that secret that gets revealed every year when one of the Nordic and/or Scandinavian countries takes first place for happiness, and maybe there is some truth to that. We know happiness is fleeting and unsustainable. We want fulfillment, purpose, meaning and connection. The trick is to be able to find those things in ordinary living.
The anger I felt when my mom died was because I wanted more for her, and I wanted her to want more for herself. When she moved in with our family, I wanted her to get busy living while it seemed like she just wanted to get busy dying.
Her complacency was a thing I disliked in myself, and I knew that. As I get older I have become more content with doing less, and deciding what I can eliminate to add ease to my life. It's liberating, but I also know I shouldn't veer all the way into constant comfort. I become anxious before traveling now; anxiety didn't affect me much when I was younger. I use GPS even when I know where I'm going because I like the reassurance. As a person who charted a course from Delaware to my first active duty reporting location in El Paso, Texas using only my Rand McNally road Atlas, it's pretty terrible how far I've fallen. Certainty brings comfort but limits potential for adventure.
That's where I get upset with myself. What's happened to me? Where is that person I used to be, who wasn't swayed by the unknown ahead? Why am I more secure behind bars?
She had always wanted to go to Paris, and the closest we'd gotten was when we were flying home on a family trip from Sardinia and our plane was detoured to Charles de Gaulle Airport. I don't even remember if we got off of the plane and entered the terminal. Even after she moved back to Italy, she didn't plan a trip to Paris. Why not? It was the waiting game, again -- wanting company, someone to share the burden of planning, and I see this same quality in myself. I postponed visiting Iceland for over a decade, partially out of being discouraged by a spouse that didn't want to go, and partially because I put the bars in front of myself.
Maybe the bars we put up were a way to protect ourselves from the inevitable disappointment of a crumbling castle in the sky.
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