Get Busy Living—Because What You've Been Sold Is Death

I woke up this morning thinking about one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption. That scene where Andy Dufresne looks at Red and says, “It’s time to get busy living or get busy dying.” It used to hit me like a motivational quote you'd slap on a poster. Now? It lands like a warning.

Back then, I thought “get busy living” just meant choosing to have a good attitude or chasing some dream, creating hope. What I didn’t understand was that the version of living we’ve been handed by this culture—by the media, the healthcare system, the government, the food industry—isn’t living at all. It’s slow-motion dying with a smile painted on.

Look around. We're drowning in processed food, sedated by pills, pacified by the Colleseum, and convinced that convenience equals freedom. We microdose our way through burnout, call it self-care, and hand over our autonomy to systems that profit from our slow decline. The system doesn’t want you dead—not quickly. That’s not profitable. It wants you barely alive. Just functional enough to work, compliant enough to obey, sick enough to depend on them, and distracted enough to never notice.

That’s not life. That’s managed decay.

It took me decades to realize it. I spent years deep in the VA system—what I now call Veterans Death Care Services. I was overmedicated, under-listened to, and treated like a number in a spreadsheet. It wasn’t healing. It was maintenance—maintenance of dysfunction. Three years ago, I stepped out of that system. I said enough. I stopped outsourcing my health, my mind, my peace. And that was the day I actually chose to live.

So now, when I hear that line—get busy living or get busy dying—I hear something else entirely. I hear a call to rebellion. Not against people. Not against the neighbor with the wrong sign in their yard. Against the system that trained us to hate each other while it quietly poisons us both.

Living is radical now. Choosing whole food over fake food is radical. Choosing connection over distraction is radical. Choosing self-healing over chemical dependence is revolutionary.

You’ve been sold death dressed up as freedom. So the question isn’t are you alive? The question is are you living or slowly dying?

Choose wisely.