“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” -Buddhaghosa
When I got to the prison where I did most of my time, I decided to teach GED as my job. This was incredibly challenging. The staff were supposed to teach the classes but opted to delegate that to an inmate who would make anywhere from twelve to fifty cents an hour. Being an inmate teaching other inmates meant you had zero authority. Imagine teaching a bunch of grown men elementary school math. Some are angry because the institution forces them to take the class lest they lose some of their good time for refusing to attend. Others have severe learning disabilities that can quickly descend into bouts of anger. And there were a few that were just bat shit crazy. It was an interesting challenge, and one that quickly burned me out — something that made me empathize with teachers in the outside world that struggle to make an impact on their students.
One of the students I had, named “Smalls”, was particularly obnoxious. He would complain about being in class, rap while I was trying to teach, and disrupt other inmates who were trying to learn. I tried to be respectful at first. I get it, he didn’t want to be there and I didn’t want him there, but what really pissed me off was how he distracted those around him who genuinely wanted to learn. He was so obnoxious one day that I couldn’t take it anymore. We started shouting at each other, and shit got really heated. I still hadn’t developed a full sense of awareness of where I was, but later that day I started to think about what had happened. Smalls was in a gang. I was not. I had people who liked me and respected me, but they were also more rational. Smalls was not, nor were the people he associated with. If he felt disrespected, he would act to correct that. This pissed me off further. Between my conflict with him and the increasing chaos from other students, I ended up quitting the education department not long after.
Despite quitting, my hatred for Smalls did not. I loathed him. If I was out on the yard and I heard his voice, whether it was rapping obnoxiously or just shouting, my blood would boil. I fantasized about killing him in the most gruesome ways, like torturing his still alive body while he screamed in agony. That gave me pleasure and diffused my anger.
About a year later, Smalls got transferred to another prison. I was elated. It felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest. No more rage triggering moments from him. I thought that would be the end of it until some time had passed and an acquaintance told me that Smalls was in a coma at his current prison. My first reaction was, “I hope that motherfucker dies.” The malice I had in my heart for him knew no bounds. I told some of my friends the good news and we all laughed agreeing that karma’s a bitch.
A few months before I was about to go home, I was talking to a friend of mine in my unit and he brought up Smalls. “Yo, you heard what happened to him?” Apparently Smalls had woken up from his coma and had gotten released from prison after doing over a decade. Less than six months after his release, he shot somebody and was facing 20-life. When I heard all of this, my heart sank. There was no anger or schadenfreude. In it’s place, there was only sadness — sadness for a man who had spent most of his adult life in prison up until that point and would likely spend most, if not all, of the rest of his life in the cage he so briefly left. It was in this moment that I realized something fundamental had shifted within me.
It’s hard to describe all the mental transitions that led up to that moment of empathy I had for someone I had once hated so strongly. Prison is an amplifier for negative emotions. Feel sad? Prison will drown you in grief. Feel angry? Prison will stoke the flames of rage until you explode. When I started my sentence, I was really angry. Part of me thought my life was over, and another part of me was extremely bitter at the thought of being confined for several years. I was angry at life and the conditions I found myself in. I fantasized about killing government agents that I thought had led my life to this point. I fantasized about killing the US attorney that had sentenced me. I even fantasized about killing his wife and kids, just to imagine the reaction on his face. My mind was a dark place.
Through time I started to see things differently, due in large part to the numerous and excellent mentors I had courtesy of the books I read. A common theme of these authors who had endured far worse seemed to be their ability to rise above their circumstance without letting their anger consume them. Anger was so seductive to me. It allowed me to blame many outside forces for my circumstances. It was so easy to wake up, look out the barred windows, and think “Fuck the government.” But waking up like that day after day had a psychological cost. Anger became the only comfort. It changed my ability to think clearly. At times, it felt like a strong motivator. Listening to really angry music would get me pumped for a workout on the prison yard. I loved it. But that also meant that everyday started with that state of mind. It was a state of destruction and rage — one that would then carry over into the rest of the day, producing an elevated emotional state of angst.
Finding The Space
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” -Viktor Frankl
I read many similar versions of the above quote, especially from the stoics, and it’s the basic principle that one can choose how they respond emotionally to external events. When we start to believe that that choice is real, things start to shift. It sounded like bullshit at first, but I started to connect the dots with people who inspired me, both in the books I read and in my life, and I noticed that this was a common denominator. I started to think what it would mean to put this into action. What would it mean to no longer be a slave to this anger? Where would I even start?
I can’t remember where I read it, but I had an idea one day after someone had really upset me earlier in the day that I would picture them while I was laying in my cold bunk at night and wish them well. Reading about this exercise seemed absurd to me, but something in me decided to give it a try. The result was interesting. I felt my nerves release a little. As the anger subsided, a new emotion emerged: empathy. I thought about this man’s life — what brought him to prison, his current mental state, and what had set him off (which in turn set me off). As I journeyed through this emotion, sadness also started to emerge.
I tried several variations of this exercise, sometimes trying to send love to the other person or imagining myself giving them a hug. Each exercise had a noticeable effect on my nerves. Even more interesting, I found myself looking at people differently in my day-to-day life. If I was in my unit and someone I found particularly annoying was shouting or being obnoxious, I noticed that there was a space between hearing the trigger and reacting with anger. In that space, I was able to separate myself and ask questions. I would start by asking why is this person being obnoxious? Sometimes, it would diffuse from there. I’d realize that I knew this person had severe behavioral issues or knew that he had gone through some crazy emotional shit with his family on the outside earlier in the day. It helped to humanize the conflict rather than just snap internally. Sometimes that wasn’t enough though. When it got to this point, it was about controlling my own actions. What could I do about it? Fighting is a lose-lose situation in prison, because even if you win the fight, there’s a good chance you both go to solitary confinement and lose some of your good time. Thus it became a matter of shifting my mindset and letting it go. These methods became tools of survival in helping me maintain calm despite the many disruptions throughout the day, and they made all the difference.
Years after getting out and reflecting on my journey through prison, another story came to mind — one that was illuminated only in hindsight. There was a guy in my unit with twenty-five years who was always smiling and saying “Praise God”. He probably said this fifty plus times a day whenever he saw someone. It annoyed the shit out of me. “Who is this motherfucker with his fake smile and fake savior?” — I would think to myself as I heard him say it, or, even worse, when he said it to me. It must be nice to be so deluded as to be able to put a smile on your face in this environment. As I think about it now, a new question comes to mind. “What if his smile and sense of peace were real?” The thought makes me realize that underneath the differences in beliefs, a part of me was envious of the peace that his faith had given him — the faith to endure twenty five years waking up in a cage everyday with a smile and praising God for another beautiful day.
Understanding my anger and lessening it’s control on my mind allowed me to see this man in another light. What would it mean to find peace regardless of external circumstance as he had done? How would a life not driven by anger be different from the comfort of having it as a default emotion? Tasting a life different from this mindset has given me the desire to seek the peace that this religious man had. Having glimpsed it briefly, I know that it is possible now and it is this peace that I strive for today.
When I think about Smalls now, my response is one of curiosity and empathy. The anger and hatred that I once felt for him disappeared completely. As I reflect on my past self from that time, it feels like I’m looking into a different person. It’s a humbling reminder of how time and perspective can dramatically shift one’s perception, as well as the power of making incremental changes. For me, that first change was finding the space between the external world around me and my subsequent emotions and actions. Once we realize that this space exists, we begin to feel a sense of agency. It is this sense of agency where we can find peace, and ultimately our true freedom.
