By Charles “Tom” Brown
In coming to prison I’ve learned the hard way how resistance to losses increases the suffering. Instead there has to be a kind of surrender. I’ve found that the degree of suffering is directly related to the degree of holding on. Most of us don’t let go of anything very easily.
A subtle part of this dance with loss is knowing and remembering that although my body is imprisoned, my heart and mind have a different kind of freedom. The most important thing I’ve learned in the last ten years is that even in the midst of a long prison sentence, there can be happiness, even joy.
Now to the tricky part: all of life is a blessing, a gift. For years I couldn’t call the loss of material goods and my freedom a gift. It felt like a curse, actually, something undeserved and unnecessary. It still feels like a curse some days, but there are gifts here, too. Losses remind us that we don’t have forever to take care of what matters most to us. In these years of doing what I could to help other inmates, my life has opened up like a flower and grace has come in a thousand ways like a cloud of butterflies on a summer’s morning.
So loss is a dance, an admonition, a curse, a blessing. I would not wish it on anyone. Nonetheless, here I am. How can I not bow down to it? It has humbled me and stripped me bare; it has given me my true life.
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