Escaping Pleasantville

“Unless there is some pressure, social or parental, pushing [an] infant beyond the pleasure principle, human nature tends to largely take the path of least resistance. We really do need prods, goads, ideals to help us think outside of the little boxes we all create for ourselves.” So said Franciscan and spiritual leader, Richard Rohr.

We only know what we know. Unfortunately, we don’t know what we don’t know.

If someone grows up in a house where daddy beats mommy every day, the kids just think is normal. We naturally think that what we experience is what is real; it just is, and until we are exposed to an alternative, we think it’s normal.

So unless we are exposed to different ways of thinking and living, we are destined to repeat the realities we previously experienced.

Too often we prefer to live in the certainty (but very small town) of Pleasantville than face the uncertainty of a really big world full of wonderfulness.

Pleasantville is a film released in 1998 about two modern-day kids who escape into the idealist 1950s black and white town of Pleasantville.

If you haven’t read my post about the film, please click here.

Unfortunately, we are often destined to do the same things over and over, expecting a different outcome, or maybe even happy with the same ole same ole.

We get stuck, really stuck. A car stuck in the mud is useless. Muscles that are unused atrophy; they become dead weight. And a world that never changes succumbs to chaos and death.

Do you really want a piece of you to die every day Do you want to grow increasingly irrelevant? Do you want to be the person you are today to be the you in ten years?

Change can be scary. We fear the unknown. We fear what we don’t understand.

But this I know, remaining in winter is a terrible thing. If spring never came, we would never get to enjoy renewed life, pretty flowers, and the warmth on our skin.

A moving car is much easier to steer than a parked one.

So what do you need to get moving again?

Read a new book? Make new friends? Try new experiences? Work out the dark places of your soul?

This I know. I don’t know what I don’t know. So putting myself out there is almost always a really, really good thing.

To some extent, we all have areas of our lives that are lived in black and white.

Go find the color. Escape Pleasantville.