Issue 85 - Shadows

Welcome to Issue 85 of Deep Life Reflections, where I share five things I’ve been enjoying and thinking about over the past week.

This week, we explore the shifting role of privacy in our lives—and the increasing challenges to maintain it. First is Lowry Pressly’s new book, The Right to Oblivion, which offers a fresh examination on privacy’s essential value in today’s hyperconnected world. We then turn to Frank Darabont’s modern classic, The Shawshank Redemption, a film that speaks to the quiet power of keeping parts of ourselves hidden. Together, these works invite us to reflect on the balance between showing and shielding our true selves in an ever-more digital world.

Join me as we explore this week’s Friday Five.

1. What I’m Reading

The Right to Oblivion. By Lowry Pressly.

Have you ever considered whether it’s possible to lead a truly private life in today’s hyperconnected world? With human lives becoming ever more digital, the very notion of privacy may even seem absurd. Our personal information is abundant online, and those parts of our lives not being tracked and turned into data are receding by the day. In The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life, Lowry Pressly reexamines privacy not just as a political right but as a key to a life worth living.

People have long been wary of intrusion into their personal lives. We can trace this back to the first photograph, taken in 1826 by French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in his garden. In the 19th century, the idea of a photograph stirred fear that the camera might someday reach deeper, probing people’s minds. While we don’t fear mind-reading cameras today, our anxieties have shifted to concerns over digital devices and the ways they track, analyse, and sometimes manipulate our behaviour.

Pressly, however, believes true privacy isn’t just freedom from data collection or surveillance; it’s a positive space, a form of what he terms ‘oblivion,’ where real human depth and personality reside. Privacy, he argues, is more than shielding information—it’s a retreat from constant exposure, allowing us the luxury of mystery and introspection. He quotes filmmaker Werner Herzog: “You cannot live if everything is illuminated, explained, and put on the table.” Pressly believes we need this shadow, this darkness, to nurture qualities that data can’t capture—creativity, sorrow, joy, love. Without it, we risk seeing ourselves just as ‘data subjects,’ reduced to a set of descriptions and records that ignore the unquantifiable aspects of our nature.

Viewing ourselves as data points has consequences: our inner lives grow shallow, and our relationships suffer. When our private lives are eroded, the trust and meaning that connect us to others lose their foundation. Pressly suspects that fear drives much of our compulsion to stay online, to compulsively curate our social networks like presidential book libraries. He suggests these acts are our (understandable) attempts to regain control over how our identity is managed and perceived—a paradoxical reaction to the loss of privacy.

The solution he offers is to embrace a version of ‘oblivion’ by rediscovering the freedom of being temporarily forgotten. In reality, this might mean putting a little more distance between ourselves and our public persona, protecting space and time to reflect on the unaccountable—an essential human need. It’s a balancing act between the two ancient Greek maxims: “Know yourself,” and “Nothing in excess”—both of which are etched on the same stone. The implication being there are ethical limits to self-knowledge; that we need our hidden and unnoticed spaces. It’s an interesting thought, and one I hadn’t considered before.

In our digital age, complete privacy isn’t really a realistic goal. So much of our day-to-day lives are online for convenience and speed. But we can strive to guard our most personal thoughts and experiences from public consumption. In these protected spaces, we can find the freedom to become who we are. Growing into a fully defined self requires a little darkness and shade. Each of us lives partially in shadow.

This is something we can protect.  

2. What I’m Watching

The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Directed by Frank Darabont.

The Shawshank Redemption is now thirty years old, which doesn’t seem possible. Back in 1994, it opened to mixed critical reviews, middling box offices takings, and won zero Oscars despite seven nominations. Fast forward three decades and the film has the distinction of being ranked #1 on IMDb—the world’s largest and most popular movie database. This puts it ahead of The Godfather, Citizen Kane, Star Wars, and, well, any other film you can think of. That’s quite a comeback story—a long con as steady and methodical as spending two decades chipping away at a prison wall with a ten-dollar rock hammer.  

I don’t believe The Shawshank Redemption is the greatest film of all time, but it is a great film. The universal themes of hope, friendship, and justice are at its core, with an ending as gripping and soaring as anything Hollywood has ever done. It also has Morgan Freeman. When one thinks of the film, it’s hard not to hear his serene, soulful voice narrating with a gravitas that immediately pulls you in.

Based on Stephen King’s novella, The Shawshank Redemption is an old-fashioned prison drama with a story King himself admitted was inspired by old prison films he grew up watching. Banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murder of his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank State Prison in 1947. When Ellis ‘Red’ Redding (Freeman) first sees Andy, he misjudges this tall, thin, white-collar man as weak. Instead, prison just sharpens Andy’s resolve, although it’s far from easy time for him initially, fending off repeated sexual assaults, not always successfully.

When Andy comes to Red to buy a rock hammer to carve chess pieces, they form a friendship and kinship that becomes the heart of the film. Andy is quiet, meticulous, private, and intelligent—qualities that make him an unusual inmate. Though Tom Hanks was originally offered the role (which he had to turn down due to scheduling commitments with Forrest Gump), Robbins’ understated portrayal, combined with his slight physicality, is a perfect fit, lending Andy an unassuming strength.  

Hope is the film’s foundation. One of its most famous lines is when Andy tells Red, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” This is poignantly paralleled in the story of Brooks, their elderly friend, released after fifty years only to find himself overwhelmed by the outside world. “Terrible thing to live in fear,” Red later reflects. What makes Red and Andy such great characters is their ability to work the angles; they learn to define hope and freedom from behind cold iron bars. It gives them their power and humanity. “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

While hope and friendship drive the film, a more subtle theme emerges around privacy. Andy tells Red, “There are places in this world that aren’t made out of stone. That there’s something inside… that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. That’s yours.” Andy works in the shadows, in the depths. If his relationship with Red represents his open self, the part willing to engage with the world, his quiet and meticulous side symbolises the shadowed part no one sees. It’s this hidden side that conceals his plan to escape and enables him to maintain both his survival and his self-respect.

And, of course, his hope. Which becomes ours.

3. What I’m Contemplating

We know more about ourselves, others, and the world than ever before. Information floods our lives: endless updates from friends, family, and celebrities; precise data on every aspect of our health; recorded facts about science and history. But does this unprecedented bounty of information about human life mean we understand it more clearly or more deeply? I’m not so sure.

Through the two featured works this week, we see the necessity of accessing and embracing our deepest, most private selves—the parts that no one, and nothing, can fully touch. In Andy Dufresne’s quiet resilience and meticulously crafted escape plan, we see his determination to keep certain parts of himself hidden, cultivating a private world beyond anyone’s reach. This ultimately leads to his freedom. The Right to Oblivion complements this message, reminding us that everyone lives partially in shadow—and we can embrace that to find the freedom to become who we are by holding some things back for public consumption.

Life often involves both showing and shielding our true selves. This stands in contrast to the popular wisdom to ‘be vulnerable.’ Perhaps, instead, we should consider being intentional about who we’re vulnerable with and why.

Not everything needs to be in the public domain. There’s a reason we continue to fight for privacy.

4. A Quote to note

“The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is also true for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end.”

- Michel Foucault

5. A Question for you

Is there an area of your life that would benefit from more privacy or, conversely, more openness?

Thanks for reading and being part of the Deep Life Journey community. If you have any reflections on this issue, please leave a comment. Have a great weekend.

James

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