Janis Joplin many times sang the mournful lyrics “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose” back in the ‘60s, and well she knew the cost of freedom. It was in the price of what she gave up…not what anyone took. She never really had freedom, despite her fame and convoluted fortune, and that’s what she was saying. I know this because my business partner at the time was her best friend, and she was with her until the end.
The Cost Of Freedom Blog is about how we’ve all lost our freedom by our collective choice of attitude. We might be free to drive around and do a lot of things freely, but few people seem to know how much we’ve given up to be “free,” and what that’s costing them…and us as a society. Our prisons and jails are full of people who know the pain of that lost freedom, but the fact is few of them had it to begin with. The same is true to a less dramatic but no less impactful way about many of the rest of us who live in prisons of a different kind.
But it’s not just that, by any means. It’s much more positive than that. It’s about how we take steps to get that freedom back…again by our choice of attitude, and by our willingness to tell the truth and be accountable for our thoughts, words and actions––how we learn to respect one another, and our individual cultures, gender and personal circumstances.
The photo above depicts freedom to me, both in an energetic, visual sense, and in a more personal sense. I twice flew a light plane over that bridge, once when it was enshrouded in thick fog and only a few skyscrapers (literally) poked through the layers of Walt Disney clouds, and again later on in her famous “golden glow” at sunset. Many years later, I stood under her with a group of my closest friends celebrating a breakthrough moment in my life. I had just addressed a luncheon of the members of the San Francisco Yacht Club on the subject of the meaning and true value of personal freedom, as one who served 2 1/2 years in federal prison, and whose federal prosecutor later wrote the Foreword to a book I authored. Behind me in the distance as I spoke to this esteemed body of accomplished people…was Alcatraz.
This Blog Site is about Personal Freedom, and I’d like to focus on those who have done time on either side of the fences and walls. It is my desire to explore ways and exchange ideas and principles of understanding how we create a better, more effective and truly correctional system of criminal justice. If we can make even a 15% positive change, the impact on society overall will be huge. Imagine what it could be like if we could make that 50%. We can. We just have to think…and act…differently. I know, “easier said than done”…but we have to start somewhere. Why not start with ourselves?
I recently saw a trailer for a new movie, “The Visitor.” I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m certainly going to because the tag line hooked me: You can live your whole life and never know who you are…until you’ve seen the world through others' eyes. The trailer went on to show a man bored with his life who, by chance, is exposed to the lives of people less fortunate than him. In a few short minutes, I was swept up into his new outlook as he began to reach out to others and use his professional skills and insights to make life a little better and more meaningful for them.
Have you looked at the world through others' eyes? I have…and now I can hardly do anything but that. I was born into a fairly respectable family…a career Army officer and mother who raised us as morally as anyone in the Midwest, where we were all from. But he bailed out early in my life for reasons known only to his soul, and I was left to make crucial decisions way too early for that busy little mind of mine to handle. As a result, what should have been a pretty decent future became for a while a series of jail and prison cells. I was forced to discover that life was very different for a whole lot of people outside of my protected military upbringing. Those people had lived through outrageous challenges that most people can only imagine through graphic portrayals of prison life in movies, books and television programs.
What I experienced, once I got over the initial fears and posturing that goes on between ethnic groups and different cultures, was a common human thread…men who were struggling with the same fears, angers and remorse…albeit often hidden…that I was. Once I began to use my education and communication skills to help them better understand their behavior and how to change their attitudes and their outlook, I discovered a whole world of men who could overcome anything…and many who actually wanted to. They just didn’t know how…nor had anyone on the outside willing to help them make the lasting changes needed. More often than you might believe, I had hardened criminals with tattoos and scars all over their bodies in tears as they told me stories of their childhoods and how much they wanted to be respected and cared about by society.
Whether you’re dealing with prisoners or former prisoners, or people who are merely prisoners of their own minds and negative attitudes, the willingness on your part to see the world through their eyes can and will make the biggest difference in bringing about deep and lasting changes in the way we live our lives and build toward a more meaningful future. If you will pause from time to time and be willing to see the world through others' eyes, your world will change for the better…guaranteed.
A front page feature article in today’s Sunday paper described the rising interest on the part of aging Americans to join the Peace Corps and “make a difference” in the world. God knows that the starving kids in Bosnia, Bulgaria and people living less fortunately in all parts of the world need and well deserve all the help they can get. At the same time, however, so do millions of our own people right here in America. Believe it or not, we have many “third-world” living conditions within our own borders. Some of them are Native American reservations, which to me is an ironic twist of fate for those whose ancestors were here first, and many more who are in the streets of many of our biggest cities. Of those, a huge percentage are people who have either done time in prisons and jails of America, or are destined to if their attitudes and lifestyles don’t change soon. Then there are the families and the children of those who are or have been incarcerated. When one considers that 2.6 million people are locked up across America, and they impact at least 5 to 10 people on the outside, that number alone is staggering to consider. It exceeds the entire populations of some of those third-world countries who "need our help".
So, what about us? What about our people? What about the children growing up in neighborhoods where the wallpaper on whatever rooms they have to sleep in are constantly illuminated with the red and blue flashing lights of the police cars outside, and whose playgrounds are streets filled with drug addicts and dealers, prostitutes and police SWAT teams and helicopters circling overhead? How do they fend for themselves, and what hope do they have for a better way to live? Who’s making a difference in their lives?
In the early 1980’s, Jerome Miller became the Director of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. In an unprecedented move, Mr. Miller closed all but the most essential juvenile detention centers in his state, and put the money saved into pro-active programs to mentor and provide simple caring to juveniles in the form of college students paid to “hang out” with juveniles as “big brothers” and “big sisters.” The rate of juvenile crime in Massachusetts during those years dropped by over 50%.
As someone who has dedicated much of the past decade or so to “making a difference” right here at home, I commend anyone wishing to do anything that makes a difference in the lives of others, and I urge anyone wishing to do so to look into juvenile diversion programs and anything having to do with “re-entry” or “aftercare” of former felons. It’s not a bad or scary thing, because every former offender (and they are “former” until they re-offend), is really just a terrified little kid in a scarred, tattooed grown-up body who made the wrong but often only choices available to them early in life.
You want to make a difference in the world? Start right here at home…and right now. All it takes is a modicum of compassion, a willingness to understand, and a little courage to overcome preconceived notions and judgments, and make an effort to learn more about it. Just that much will reduce crime in this country by as much as 10%, I can promise you. As a noted correctional specialist once wrote to me, “For altruists who want to save lives, that’s a lot of lives. To economists who want to save money, that’s a lot of money.” Google “Prisoner Re-entry” or “Prisoner Aftercare Programs” in your state for more information than you can likely absorb in the two years required to serve in the Peace Corps, or check out the large number of affiliates and resources appearing on this blog site, and you may just find your “next calling” in life.
It’s hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong these days. So much is coming out in the news and on the Internet that seems so convincing that either all is lost or all is saved, depending on how you choose to view things. Either way, Ph.D.’s and stalwart economists and political analysts are obviously so confused and conflicted that anyone onboard this “ship” of ours has got to be terrified as to who’s at the helm and what sort of charts are they using to navigate us through the storms ahead.
Having been through some storms of my own that on a personal level make what lies ahead of us not so scary to me, I’m here to say that it’s all part of the journey we’ve all known secretly or otherwise was bound to come. “Life runs in cycles,” a very wise old mentor of mine used to say. “If we would just step back a bit and look at the patterns, we could predict the future pretty accurately.” He was 94 when he passed away with his Daytimer still in hand, and he’d run businesses as big as any that are now in various stages of bankruptcy and collapse. He’d seen it all, through World Wars, recessions and the “Great Depression,” and he said with a smile, “It’s all just an exercise in consciousness…and sometimes it’s better just to ride the horse the direction it’s running.”
Yes, there’s trouble ahead…and some people are going to get hit hard. But it doesn’t have to be all that hard. What my old friend was saying, in essence, was that once you’re moving, stay with it and enjoy the ride as best you can. How you get to the other end is a matter of your choice of attitude. Fight it and resist it, and you only make it harder on yourself. Fight it and resist it to the extreme, and you’ll most likely not ever see what’s on the other end.
At several points in my own ride through life, I’ve been at what appeared to me to be a dead end, but I always managed to take a deep breath and plunge ahead, only to find sensibility and mysteries unveiled. Recently, at one of the worst times in my life, I chose to keep a truly positive (as opposed to faking it) attitude, and the most apparently unlikely person to have any resources with which to help me showed up…and became one of my biggest supporters and newest “best friend.” That’s actually happened to varying degrees many times along the way, and I can tell you unequivocally that it’s worth every trial and every sorrow.
Show up for others in your life, no matter what, and don’t give in to the doomsayers and “analysts,” and your ride will prove memorable…even enjoyable––regardless of what it might look like right now. If enough of us do that, those storms will blow over with a whole lot less damage and destruction, and like the end of the movie, “Titantic,” we’ll all raise our goblets in toast to the ride of our lives.
A few days ago, I buried a friend of mine. She wasn’t a long-time friend…in fact, I hardly knew her at all. She bounced off the windshield of the truck in front of me, and in a blur of feathers and wings she fell under my car as I passed over her. I hate it when that happens…even more so when it’s me that’s the cause of such suffering…but I had places to go and people to meet, so I winced a bit and brushed it off as simply another contribution to the food chain. But as I drove along another mile or two, it bothered me enough that I knew it would still be bothering me later if I didn’t do something about it. So, I whipped a U-turn at the top of the next hill and went back to find her still in the highway and not yet road-kill.
I got out of the car and took a look at her. She was still blinking her little eyes…still showing some sign of life…so I picked her up and held her for a bit, hoping that perhaps she was just knocked silly but would recover and fly away as they sometimes do. She laid there in my hand calmly looking back up at me for a minute or so, then suddenly flapped her wings furiously and fell to the ground. When I picked her up, her eyes were closed and she was gone.
I was on my way back from a long road trip, and that incident…harmless and insignificant as it may seem, had a lasting impact on me. It was just a bird…one of millions out there doing their thing, so why should this one have any impact on me? It was a bit of feather and wing clinging to life in a palm of human flesh and bone, clinging to life on another level, but nonetheless significant in the grand scheme of things.
As I traveled along in the days afterward, I thought about the human friends and family members I’ve lost over the years, and wondered what had been meaningful about them…what had they accomplished in their lives? We’ve just “lost” Michael Jackson, once revered then scorned and vilified, and now loved and revered again, and along with him another icon of my generation, Farrah Fawcett, born the same year as me, and someone I had a huge crush on for most of my adult life.
What did they leave behind of lasting value besides memories and estates for others to squabble over? What did they do to make life better for others? Such thoughts caused me to go deep into myself and wonder what have I done to make life better for anyone else? What legacy will I leave behind that will matter to others?
What about you? Who are you? What are you doing with your life that really makes any difference to others? Are you just getting by, or are you pursuing something in your life that has a positive impact on others? Are you just making your way from cradle to grave as safely as possible, or are you clearing a path for others behind you?
It doesn’t take a Michael Jackson or a Farrah Fawcett to make a real difference in the world. As Margaret Meade wrote so powerfully, it only takes a small group of (passionate) people committed to making a difference to change the world for the better. So, whether you impact millions, like Michael or Farrah, or one at a time, do it with all the passion and caring you can muster. If enough of us impact just a few others in our lives, we can and we will see miracles and wonders in our lifetimes yet. It doesn’t take an icon…and in fact it rarely works that way at all. It only takes a few of us, dedicated to leaving behind something for others to be inspired by, and a clearer path for them to find their own way. Can you do that much? If you can, you will be just as important––if not more so––than any “icon” ever has been.
Personally, I don’t know where it stops on the grander scale, and things may well get worse before they get better. But I do believe that they will get better eventually, and that it has taken such massive breakdown on all levels and resulting hardship to get our individual attention on what’s most important. WE are what’s most important. By that I mean that we as individuals matter in that overall grand scheme of things, and the only way that we can hope to make a difference in creating a truly “kinder, gentler nation” and safe world to live in is to give back to one another instead of taking blindly whatever we can from a nation that is essentially bankrupt.
I don’t know if we’re on the “brink of collapse,” as so many people are saying, but I know that I can at least stop contributing to the breakdown by paying more attention to how I go about my daily life, and by how willing I am to reach back and help others. If you don’t think that will make a difference, consider how all those people were able to keep their charades going for so long. We allowed that to happen…all 300 million-plus of us at every level of our “get-ahead-at-any-cost” culture. Those planes flew into those towers not just because a bunch of Islamic Jihadists had a grudge against us. It happened because we stopped caring about others on a massive scale…and we allowed our political, military and corporate leaders to take whatever they wanted from other countries and from us. Collectively, we contributed to the process in some way or other by allowing it to happen.
I’m not going to take issue with the powers-that-be, or side with radical elements who want to bring the government down, but I damn sure will start paying more attention to what goes on in my life. The only thing I can do of any real substance, even if it’s tiny by comparison with what a general or a Senator or CEO of any of the remaining Fortune 500 companies can do, is to reach back and help someone else get through what is going on now. Just that act alone makes one person at a time feel better and more valued, and begins a process of rebuilding confidence and caring that, one at a time, builds to the point where more people are paying more attention to what goes on in their lives and who we put in office and whose products we buy.
We got ourselves so caught up in making a living and getting ahead or just surviving that no one paid attention to some trends and patterns that now in hindsight seem pretty obvious even to un-trained eyes. Those people got away with the things they did because we let them, and we ignorantly allowed ourselves to believe that we couldn’t do anything about it. We just went along with it, believing that it didn’t affect us.
I know that it doesn’t seem that any individual can make much of a difference, but we have to begin somewhere…which can and should be with ourselves. Each of us can make a difference by the examples that we set and how we impact others with our thoughts, words and actions. Consider the movie, “Pay It Forward,” and how you felt after watching it. Of course it was “just a movie,” but it had a profound impact on just about everyone who watched it because it showed how powerful one simple idea, properly implemented, had the potential of changing masses of people at a compounding rate.
You can make a difference. You need to make your voice and your intentions heard among those over whom you have any influence or control, and you have to commit to making a difference, no matter how small it may seem to you. Mentoring, caring, guiding and re-directing others on any and all levels can and will restore balance and sensibility in an insane world. At no time in history has social order and disorder been in such an amplified state. But we have the Internet, satellite TV, computers and many things that will vastly accelerate the process, which can make these the best of times in the face of the worst of times.
THE COST OF FREEDOM BLOG
This blog is provided and maintained by Don Kirchner, founder of The Society for Return to Honor, and author of "A Matter of Time" and "Return to Honor". You can write to Don Kirchner at 80 Supai Drive, Sedona, AZ 86351.
"I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your recent correspondence regarding your organization, Society for Return to Honor. As a society is faced with ever increasing crime rates, the need for programs that assist in the re-entry of former convicts into society is becoming more apparent. I commend you for overcoming the difficulties you have faced in your life and taking the initiative to help others in similar situations." -- John McCain, United States Senator.
"I feel your thoughts for juvenile justice programs have merit and commend you for the initiative shown in creating this proposal." -- Barry Goldwater, United States Senator
"The purpose of this letter is to express my appreciation for the assistance that you have been rendering the residents at the Bernalillo County Detention Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico. During the period of you incarceration, you have served as a tutor/counselor for numerous other residents in a sincere effort to help them prepare for better education and improve themselves." -- Michael F. Hanrahn, Director, Bernalillo County Detention Center
"I was impressed with the events in your personal life and the decisions you have made that brought you to this point. It is rare that an individual such as yourself, who has experienced the dangerous and destructive sides of drug trafficking, is able to re focus one’s life into a positive contribution to society." -- Craig N. Chretien, Former #3, Head of DEA
"My sincerest appreciation for your continuing work and effort toward educating the public about incarceration, recidivism and re-entry issues. I have been re-energized by your efforts and dedication to continue development of transition programs and projects designed to successfully assist those incarcerated to re-enter society as law abiding and productive citizens." -- John J. Spearman, Assistant Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections
Vietnam Veteran
Don Kirchner Served as a Chief Warrant Officer and Combat Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam
