Transform Your Mind

            I read a good bit in here. Frankly, one of the things about doing “time” is how much time you actually have. Outside, “in the real world,” you make a dozen excuses for not reading, not just talking – and listening – to your kids, your spouse, yourself. Every day you run at a frenetic pace. You rush out the door before the sun rises, cup of coffee in your hand. You rush through work – all morning there are meetings and conferences, and calls, and emails – dozens of emails. You are so “busy” doing exactly what you aren’t really sure.

            Morning turns into afternoon and you fit in a four mile run. The time it takes – 30 to 35 minutes – you try and listen to your heartbeat, try and remember why it is you fell in love with running, with the law, with her … but you can’t because you’ve got too much to do, too many irons in the fire, time to run becomes just another exercise, just another item to check off your to do list.

            You’re dying, only you don’t know it. You’ve succumbed to all those things you hated when you were young and thought you knew everything, back when everything came easy. Life has a way, as a law professor of mine would remind us each class of “disabusing your mind from your vision of self-importance.” Yeah, time was killing me outside. There wasn’t enough time. So, you cut corners, you rationalize, you break your word and you think you’re finally living. You aren’t though.

            Back to reading. So now I have time to read a couple of books each week. And, I start each morning in the dark reading, and thinking, and talking to God about where I am at that precise moment because time isn’t an enemy, nor is it a friend, it just is; and how we use it matters. All this week I kept coming back to a letter written long ago. The writer had been a success: Good upbringing, well respected in the community, future career plans in a “profession.” That was then. As he writes he’s under arrest. I know how his story ends already; he’ll die under arrest. In our way of thinking, this guy, this letter writer is a criminologist’s case study of recidivism. I’ve lost count of his arrests, his jailings, his repeated run-ins with the law.

            But the guy, for some odd reason, he writes from behind bars. And over and over he talks about the joy he feels in the worst of times because he’s found the answer. I never even thought to confront the question. He writes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

            Transforming your mind, what a crazy concept. And yet, almost every day I find myself sitting here thinking about those three words. The brilliant scholar/author C.S. Lewis, in his book, “God in the Dock,” described a group of people. Half think they’re in a hotel; half think they’re in prison. Here’s the twist: The half in the hotel, they find it quite intolerable. But the other half, those in prison, they conclude things are fairly tolerable. It is all, CS Lewis concludes, based on our expectations.

            Couple of quick stories before I get to life in here. I’m in Vegas with a few buddies and our wives and we decide, while eating a huge meal at an overpriced steakhouse with a tower of seafood three feet tall staring us in the face, that we – the guys – need Johnny Walker Blue. Those who know “JW” know you get Red rather cheaply and Black for a nice blended scotch. But Blue? It’s $70 a glass. “F – it, it’s only money.” So the four of us have a round, then a second, and a third. We drop close to $1,000 on Blue. We’re stuffing our faces looking the part of some mob movie – four middle aged white guys in pressed slacks and blazers talking way too much about sports and women.

            So the next day, we get together for cigars and drinks, our mid-afternoon ritual, while our better halves go about shopping and spa treatments and all the other things we couples would do “together” while “apart.” “Let’s get some Johnny Walker,” one of the guys says. “Just get Black; the Blue wasn’t that good.” We all looked and nodded in agreement. The “best” wasn’t that good.

            Fast forward to my life in complete collapse. I’m at the jail and I’m a mess. I don’t want to go on. I still hear Neil Young in my mind’s eye singing “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” and I’m thinking I never felt so totally alone and broken and hopeless. My friend – what a word “friend” it can’t begin to describe someone who stays when all is lost – he’s a lawyer who visits every day. I see it in his eyes as he looks at me: “Larry’s on the verge. He’s going to crack.” So one day he reaches through the attorney pass-through slot and hands me a piece of gum, wintergreen. And it is delicious! Just that taste of mint snaps my synapses and I feel refreshed, and alive, and I hate to say it, but I’m happy.

            Seventy dollar scotch, beautiful, vibrant, young women fawning over me in Vegas, limos and first class plane trips, none of those things gave me a sense of joy, of pure happiness. And here I was, with nothing to live for, and I’m almost giddy over a piece of chewing gum. Transforming your mind, all comes down to expectations just like Mr. Lewis said.

            Prison life. This week one of the cable channels comes back with another season of a show revolving around zombies, “Walking Dead,” dragging their feet as they scour the earth looking for live flesh to devour. And that walk, that vacant stare, I see it every day in here. Prison is dead time. Many of these guys, with the prescription meds to address their DSM-rated mental disorders kicking in each day and keeping them dopey, or the plain dumb-ass guys who want to act like they fit in and know something when in reality they are just ignorant and have failed at everything (yeah, I mean the idiots on the weight pile who yell out “Larry, man my people found your blog” and don’t even get what it is I’m saying), these guys are dying day by day in here. They have no purpose, they see no future, they are beaten down by time.

            I talked to a couple of the younger college guys. They pick my brain over financial issues and the law. We discuss philosophy, and politics, and ethics (funny how important discussions about ethics are in here). They just don’t get that money couldn’t make me happy. I keep telling them, money, a big house, prestige, it all goes away. I tell one of the guys, P McDiddy, to listen to “Heart of Gold” –

            “I want to live

            I want to give

            I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold

            It’s these expressions I never get

            That keep me searchin for a heart of gold”

            I tell him about the guy writing letters in prison and how, I imagine, if he had a CD player back then he’d have listened to Neil Young and smiled and thought “Neil gets what I mean by transforming.” And my young friend, he smiles at me with one of those “Larry’s losing it” smiles.

            “Transform your mind.” What really is important? Do you honestly think anyone, when you die, is going to say, “that man drank seventy dollar scotch?” No. Here’s what matters. There’s a guy in here paying for college. Fourteen years locked up; GED earned inside. He has a chest tattoo that says “addiction.” And he bitches and whines daily about his English assignments (just like he did this summer with his other class papers!). And I probably enable him; I let him moan and carp, and then I read his drafts and correct his words.

            So, “John” – he pulls “A’s” in class. I call him “4.0.” He writes a piece last week about self-image and he is profound and insightful and compact with his words. I tell him “best piece you ever wrote.” He smiles and quietly says, “When I get my degree it’ll be because of you. You really believe I can be a college graduate.” Perspective. Real value for me, even in prison.

            Three months ago, the last thing I dreaded happened. It was stupid and it was fleeting, but still deep down I couldn’t let go. And she moved on, she remarried. Funny, but the dread I feared wasn’t that bad. The heart, well that’s another matter. But, I was listening to some music the other day, and heard “It’ll All Work Out.”

            “There were times apart

            There were times together

            I was pledged to her

            Through worse or better

            When it mattered most

            I let her down

            That’s the way it goes

            It’ll all work out

            She’s better off with him

            Than here with me

            It’ll all work out … eventually.”

            Transform your mind. Get perspective. Tom Petty knew it would all work out. Prison is tolerable with the right mindset. Time is what you really make of it. Even a drug addict can be transformed into a scholar. Almost two thousand years ago a repeat offender wrote a warning, “don’t be conformed to the world.” “Transform” your mind. He was right.