Moving Beyond Walls
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is a classic tale. The main character, Edmond Dantes, is an innocent character who is betrayed and placed in prison.
The sequence of his time in prison is beautifully summarized by wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
After six years of imprisonment in the Château d'If, Dantès is on the verge of suicide when he befriends the Abbé Faria ("The Mad Priest"), a fellow prisoner whom he hears trying to tunnel his way to freedom. Faria's calculations on his tunnel were off, and it ends up connecting the two prisoners' cells rather than leading to freedom. Over the course of the next eight years, Faria comes to give Dantès an extensive education in language, culture, and science. He also explains to Dantès how Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort would each have had their own reasons for wanting Dantès in prison. Knowing himself to be close to death, Faria tells Dantès the location of a treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. When Faria dies, Dantès takes his place in the burial sack, moving the corpse to his own bed through their tunnel. When the guards throw the sack into the sea, Dantès escapes and swims to a nearby island - an extremely difficult feat because of the Château d'If's isolated location and dangerous offshore currents. No one was known to have escaped the prison and survived.
Psychologically, this is fascinating. Both Edmond and Abbe are trapped in the prison and are looking for ways to escape. A conventional way would be a tunnel, which Abbe digs, but he ends up in Edmond's cell. The only way that Edmond eventually escapes is by hiding in the sack which the guards believe to be the recently deceased Abbe.
This is a very dramatic case, but as a simplified metaphor it is powerful in its own sense.
Our mind can be a "prison cell" sometimes. Our own thoughts and limitations that we set for ourselves trap us in an illusion of a prison. We don't see a way out, or we fixate on digging a tunnel: if only I do this, I will be free. In a sense, we are trying to control our destiny. We are so busy in digging the tunnel that we don't see any other options for escape.
What is ironic is that the fixation on the escape itself is in fact what makes us a prisoner. It's what keeps the walls up around us.
Edmond Dantes, after six years of imprisonment, could not have conceived that he would finally exit the prison in a burial sack thrown into the sea. Granted, it was dangerous. But he had the will to try. He had nothing to lose.
And Edmond Dantes did not see his imprisonment as a waste of time. He did everything thing he could, learned everything he could, and used it to his advantage. A quote:
“What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?"
"Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.”
There are thus two follies of a mental imprisonment: one, that there is only one (or none!) means of escape, and, two, that the imprisonment itself is of no value.
Feeling trapped or imprisoned is merely a wake up call to oneself that it is time to grow. That's a very positive realization. To see the prison not as a burden but as a vehicle to escape far beyond the walls. To realize what's within the walls is of value and what's beyond the walls is more than we can ever imagine.
I'm winding up this blog with another quote from the book:
“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you”
For more good quotes from the book, you can visit:
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/391568-le-comte-de-monte-cristo
The sequence of his time in prison is beautifully summarized by wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
After six years of imprisonment in the Château d'If, Dantès is on the verge of suicide when he befriends the Abbé Faria ("The Mad Priest"), a fellow prisoner whom he hears trying to tunnel his way to freedom. Faria's calculations on his tunnel were off, and it ends up connecting the two prisoners' cells rather than leading to freedom. Over the course of the next eight years, Faria comes to give Dantès an extensive education in language, culture, and science. He also explains to Dantès how Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort would each have had their own reasons for wanting Dantès in prison. Knowing himself to be close to death, Faria tells Dantès the location of a treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. When Faria dies, Dantès takes his place in the burial sack, moving the corpse to his own bed through their tunnel. When the guards throw the sack into the sea, Dantès escapes and swims to a nearby island - an extremely difficult feat because of the Château d'If's isolated location and dangerous offshore currents. No one was known to have escaped the prison and survived.
Psychologically, this is fascinating. Both Edmond and Abbe are trapped in the prison and are looking for ways to escape. A conventional way would be a tunnel, which Abbe digs, but he ends up in Edmond's cell. The only way that Edmond eventually escapes is by hiding in the sack which the guards believe to be the recently deceased Abbe.
This is a very dramatic case, but as a simplified metaphor it is powerful in its own sense.
Our mind can be a "prison cell" sometimes. Our own thoughts and limitations that we set for ourselves trap us in an illusion of a prison. We don't see a way out, or we fixate on digging a tunnel: if only I do this, I will be free. In a sense, we are trying to control our destiny. We are so busy in digging the tunnel that we don't see any other options for escape.
What is ironic is that the fixation on the escape itself is in fact what makes us a prisoner. It's what keeps the walls up around us.
Edmond Dantes, after six years of imprisonment, could not have conceived that he would finally exit the prison in a burial sack thrown into the sea. Granted, it was dangerous. But he had the will to try. He had nothing to lose.
And Edmond Dantes did not see his imprisonment as a waste of time. He did everything thing he could, learned everything he could, and used it to his advantage. A quote:
“What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?"
"Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.”
There are thus two follies of a mental imprisonment: one, that there is only one (or none!) means of escape, and, two, that the imprisonment itself is of no value.
Feeling trapped or imprisoned is merely a wake up call to oneself that it is time to grow. That's a very positive realization. To see the prison not as a burden but as a vehicle to escape far beyond the walls. To realize what's within the walls is of value and what's beyond the walls is more than we can ever imagine.
I'm winding up this blog with another quote from the book:
“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you”
For more good quotes from the book, you can visit:
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/391568-le-comte-de-monte-cristo
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