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As I’ve sat in prison the last seventeen years, I have really done a lot of self-reflection. Sometimes I have laughed and other times I’ve shaken my head in disbelief at my past. I have learned it’s only through self-reflection that we can learn from our mistakes and hopefully grow into a better human being.

So much has changed in my life since I arrived here, I have realized that if I wanted to leave here and never come back, I would have to change everything about myself, especially my thinking. That seems to be the toughest thing for most of my fellow prisoners. I have met a lot of really good people in here over the years, people that have the ability to change the course of their lives, but they refuse to change their thinking.

I remember reading a book once where the great Henry Ford said, “Thinking is hard gentleman, that’s why very few people do it.” Over the years I have learned just how true this statement is. When I first read it, I thought it was funny, but as the years have passed, I learned the truth behind it. Life is a funny thing, I have learned everyone can change, but very few will. The crazy thing is prisoners know the outcome of their actions, but they keep making the same mistakes believing things will be different. The lack of thought around me every day has been amazing to see. I have talked to some people in here and I could see they actually have a lot of sense, far from stupid, yet they do stupid things all the time. It’s like they have no control of their thoughts or actions.

When we were young kids and told to stay away from something because it would hurt us, most of the time children will listen, and the ones who didn’t, once they got hurt once, they understood not to do that again. It’s like telling some kid, “If you touch this, it will burn you.”, but for whatever reason the kid still touches it and get burned.

Usually, the kid will never do it again because now he really understands the outcome of his actions. Prisoners are just the opposite; they understand the outcome because they have been burned over and over. The crazy thing is you can be sitting with a man in prison and tell him, “Hey, I wouldn’t do that brother, you might get some more time.” A lot of them have told me, “I know but I really need the money.” Or “That’s just a chance I am willing to take.” I know a guy in here with me right now who has already been to state prison several times, he was busted for selling meth, and gotten years in federal prison. While he was at his last prison, he got in trouble for selling K-2, since the administration couldn’t catch him, they ended up locking him up for a phone conversation he had with a friend. They kept him in isolation for several months, then shipped him here. Was his two times to state prison and these ten years enough? Was his close call at his last institution a wakeup call to the realization that he could get more time? Absolutely not! This guy hooked up with another guy who left here for Mexico and having him mail pounds of meth to his brother. The guy in here was already sentenced to a minimum ten years for a small amount of meth, he has to know what is going to happen if they bust him and his brother with pounds of meth. He will be lucky to get twenty-five and if they charge him with conspiracy, he might end up spending the rest of his life in here. This man is a prime example of someone that is not stupid, yet he keeps doing stupid things. He has no control over his thinking or actions, because a logical thinking person would look at the big picture and think, is what I’m doing really worth it? Let’s say this man is making five hundred or a thousand dollars, a normal thinking man would say to himself, I’m not going to mess with this, it’s not worth loosing another two decades of my life. Even though this man and I are friends, spent hours talking, he will still do the same thing. I have wondered many times how someone like this man cannot get a grip on his thinking. I of all people understand the draw to fast, easy money, but after seventeen years, I have learned there’s no amount of money worth losing years of my life. Even if I were to have made a million dollars a year for the past seventeen years, nothing, especially money, can ever replace the loss of this time. I have even tried to tell him; all money is at the end of the day is paper with numbers on it. That’s all it is, nothing else, but as I have told him through the years I have known him, it hasn’t clicked. He is in his thirties and has spent the majority of his life in prison. He’s never been married, he doesn’t have children, nothing except some pictures of a car he used to have. He sits in here doing absolutely nothing with his time. He sleeps half the day away, he never exercises, if he does he gets sore and stops, he is overweight, he eats too much, if he reads anything it has to be a hood book, because that is the only thing that gets his attention. Why? Because if he reads anything else he might actually have to think. I have even told him what the outcome of his thinking and actions will be. He listens, but the draw to make easy money won’t go away. The sad thing is, I can draw a picture of how his life is going to turn out. This drawing will be so precise, that in the end people would think I was a fortune teller. It’s sad to say, but this man will spend almost every day of his life in prison. He just cannot let go of the thought of selling drugs. The crazy thing is he looks forward to getting out. These ten years he has received has taken a lot out of him. He talks about it every week to me, he says, “I only have a few years to go. Once I finish this drug program, I’ll almost be ready for the halfway house.” If he does make it out before getting charged, once he makes it to the halfway house, I give him less than a year before he is back in prison. Except this time, he will get twenty years or more. If he reads this, I’m sure he will get upset with me, but only because I’m telling him the truth. I am also sure many others will be mad or think that I believe I am better than everyone else I here, but I promise you, that’s not true, after all I am sitting in prison myself. The only difference is that I opened my eyes to everything around me. I am thinking, I understand this place is not where I want to spend my life. I understand that there is no amount of money that’s worth losing years off my life.

The years we have spent in prison can never be replaced. Time is the most important thing in our lives and once we lose it, it’s gone forever. Most prisoners have the mind set of this, I’ll just do this for now, once I come up, I’ll take that money and do this with it or I’ll do that with it, but in all actuality, these men are only fooling themselves. The lure to make easy money will always be their downfall. As I reflect back on the last seventeen years in prison, I have learned that the only true way to change my circumstances is to change my way of thinking. All of the program’s prisons have are only tools to make prisoners think, none of them are going to change the men in here, because change begins from within. Until each man realizes this, he is doomed to a lifetime behind these fences.