Let There Be Light

Life Imprisonment has different effects on different people, but the most tragic one, i feel, is when the person survives all the years in prison and then comes out of the prison, only to see that the world around has changed and he is too incapable of handling the new, fast paced world. This write up of mine is triggered by the tragic end of Brooks in Shawshank Redemption. Did he have an alternative? I guess no. he was too old to change, too old to mend his ways, to old to match speed with the world that he stepped into, after a long long time. If you keep a person in the dark dungeons for a really long time, so long that his eyes are only accustomed to darkness and more darkness, even the slightest ray of sun can be harmful for his eyes. The light outside blinded him, he could not keep his eyes open, he had one and only one way to survive so much light.... keep them shut forever.

The world was not his place. He did not belong to the world. He belonged to the prison. He had adjusted himself there and spent that part of his life, in which almost all men start sinking into the present and adjust themselves to the environment they are in. He was a good man. He was an old man. So good and so old that he couldn't carve out his space in the bad and fast world. Is this what life imprisonment is meant for? If no, then life imprisonment should be for life and not just few years.

Darkness can not be measured. It is simply the absence of Light. Imprisonment is not meant to throw people into more darkness. How can they intend to reform a soul by letting darkness eclipse them completely? If only a little Light can banish the darkness that they are thrown into, then Let there be Light.