Lessons from "Orange Is The New Black"

I began watching a show recently called Orange is the New Black. Technically, as it's on Netflix, I got a bit hooked and watched the entirety of Season One in 2 days!

The show is a compilation of amazing, heart-wrenching yet warming, terrifying stories about a group of female characters in Federal Prison. Who they were before, and how the choices they made that landed them there. It makes you ponder ...

I dare anyone over the age of 17 to say they've never done a single illegal thing. From turning right on red when the sign says not to, to running a stop sign by accident, to trying pot once because your friends were, to sipping wine underage. No one on this planet can say that they've never made a choice that wasn't in their best interests. As Sean Connery once said "Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time." Although, I doubt most of us thought it that far through!

There are so many relatable characters in this show. From the main character who has a short sentence but keeps making choices based on the "outside world" as opposed to the "prison bubble", to the Transgender just attempting to do best by his wife & son, to the athlete who simply wanted to fit in but made bad decisions by doing so, to the tales inside the prison of the need for simple human contact. It's essentially high school on steroids with a meth drug twist. The guards are warped, the system is biased ...... talk about shades of life!

We all have our own "prison". Mine is my ED and all the misgivings and second guessing, self-doubt that goes with it .... others have anything possible that attempts to bring them down & hold them where they'd rather not be. We've all made choices in our lives that, if caught and prosecuted, could have sent us to jail. We all feel trapped, and without choices or other options at times.

The final show of Season One ends with the main character, imprisoned for transporting drug money one time ten years prior, beating up a woman who's trying to kill her, who was actually imprisoned for killing an abortion nurse, after her 5th abortion, but the Christian right wing is paying all her legal fees, and she now feels she's the mouthpiece of God because she's been "forgiven by God". It's the definition of lava hot mess. Currently, my ex-husband is attempting to continue the bullying, abusive tactics he employed during our marriage almost a decade ago in a custody battle for our son. I'm using words instead of fists to fight him, but isn't it basically the same?

The characters in this show work through their past mistakes and attempt to learn and better themselves from such. Most of us try to do the same. We screw up, we pay the price or "do the time", and move on. Unfortunately, there are people out there who constantly and consistently judge every one of us by our past transgressions ... even if we've made up for them, learned from them, and attempted to better ourselves from the lessons learned from them. These judgemental people are the saddest, most insecure humans on the planet. Anyone who is so insecure or self-centered with their own life that does not have the ability to see or appreciate strides made in the area of reparations by others, well, I pity those people. The ones who are so miserable, or stressed out by their own lives, that they have to pass judgment on others just to make themselves feel better.  It's a much worse fate than anyone who owns up to a mistake and pays the price for it.

So to those people out there that deem themselves to know what's best for everyone else who happens to pass through their lives, to those who regard anyone who doesn't think or act in exactly the same way as they personally do, to those who can't appreciate the beauty of the forest because they're too busy looking at the knots on the tree trunks ... take a deep breath and appreciate the beauty of the differences in the world. Those who don't, are missing out on more beautiful facets of life and original thought process than they'll ever know.

Everyone makes mistakes. The mistakes are not what should define a person. It's what someone Does with the Lessons from those mistakes that are a truer definition of who they are.

~ The Girl In The Little Black Dress