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You Have Been Raised In A Permission Seeking Society, It’s Why You Aren’t Succeeding Now

Dominic Medford
4 min readApr 20, 2024
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

I watched Shawshank Redemption for the first time the other day.

Enthralled by the storyline, another moviegoer goer taken captive by this film's excellent storytelling and poignant themes.

A small scene relevant to the scale of the movie caught my attention the most upon reflecting on my enjoyment of the film. The short scene centered around Morgan Freemans' character who had not long been released from the Shawshank prison and given a job as a grocery packer in the local town. Freeman’s character while doing his job stops to seek the attention of his manager to ask to use the restroom. In doing so the manager obliged but also gave Freeman notice that he was not required to seek permission to go to the bathroom as an employee at the store.

This scene struck me because up until a few years ago I had to do the same. We all had to do so for many years. Sitting at your desk in a school classroom you would calmly and respectfully raise your hand and when addressed by the teacher you would seek permission to leave the classroom and use the restroom.

We are no different from the Freemans' character in having to seek permission to use the bathroom. Unlike Freemans' character however seeking to use the restroom likely stopped…

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Dominic Medford
Dominic Medford

Written by Dominic Medford

Law and Political Sciences student in Australia who dabbles in writing about his thought processes in his spare time with the hope that it can be insightful.

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