Film, “The Way Back,” caused my outlook on life to tighten.

It’s a Peter Weir screenplay based on the book, “The Long Walk: A True Story of a Trek to Freedom,” by Slawomir Rawicz, a Polish POW. The veracity of the story is debated, but the story line is still worth noting.

The show, staged in 1941, follows gulag escapees from Siberia to India, via Tibet. It starts at the prison camp, and brings to attention the genocide under USSR Marxism. Basically, prisoners were placed in the force labor camps for petty crimes or for cracking a joke about the government. That fact alone is a wakeup call to me. I am privileged to live in the United States.

Anyway, the escapees face freezing days and nights, lack of food and water, mosquitoes, a torturous desert, the Himalayas, and moral questions. It shows the power of survival, yet it also shows that complaining about breaking out of imprisonment isn’t all that glamorous. They had to pull together and keep the high goal of freedom before their minds.

There are times when my mind feels imprisoned in sickness or worry. I shouldn’t expect a quick-fix, but should have the willingness to fight for total freedom.

The men had to walk thousands of miles to get out of territory where they weren’t threatened to return to imprisonment. To escape the human mind and ego, and reach freedom in the divine Mind, takes hard work, community spirit, and persistence.