Solitary Confinement.

Solitary Confinement

Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment distinguished by living in single cells with little or no meaningful contact with other inmates, strict measures to control contraband, and the use of additional security measures and equipment.

• It is used not only in response to the most dangerous behaviours, but rather as a broad catch-all to respond to a wide range of behaviours, including low-level and nonviolent misbehaviours, and to manage vulnerable populations, including those experiencing symptoms of mental illness or requiring protective custody.

• A prisoner lived in solitary confinement for years. He saw and spoke to no one, and his meals were served through an opening in the wall. One day an ant came into his cell. The man contemplated it in fascination as it crawled around the room.

• He held it in the palm of his hand to observe it, gave it a grain or two, and kept it under his tin cup at night. One day it suddenly struck him that it had taken him ten long years of solitary confinement to open his eyes to the loveliness of an ant.

• We all seek freedom to live as we choose. It is a part of both our human and spiritual nature. But regardless of all the political, economic, and social freedom that we may enjoy, many of us remain detained in the solitary confinement of our minds.

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish medical doctor who was confined to a concentration camp by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. He was a Holocaust survivor and went on to teach survival and living skills.

• Regardless of all the inhumane ways that he and others were treated while incarcerated, his dire circumstances taught him that the real meaning we derive from life comes from within.

• While his body was confined in prison, his mind remained free, and he maintained a will to live that carried him through the worst of life’s experiences.

The Walls.

The walls are built and fortified with fear. The ceiling is pure self-doubt. The floor consists of obsessions and compulsions. 

• We are surrounded by bars of disbelief. It is a small, dank cell where the door is always wide open, but we choose to sit there and wallow in our incarceration and self-pity.

• Never in the years before discovery did it ever dawn on us that we were the ones that passed our sentence, that it was us who condemned ourselves to live like that. 

• No matter how free we were in the real world, we were just another spiritual inmate. And we have done some real hard times there.

• Our unconditional release from our confinement comes when we choose to pardon ourselves. We forgive ourselves and everyone else for all the terrible things that happened. 

• We surrender our fear, doubt, and disbelief. We relinquish our resentments and hard feelings. We quit judging ourselves and others. The court is adjourned.

• We no longer need to spend our live-in solitary confinement. We require no further punishment. Today is the day to accept that our circumstances do not determine our happiness. 

Whatever is going on out there has little to do with what is going on in us. That is the first step to a truly free existence.

Holding a Grudge.

Holding a grudge is when we harbour anger, bitterness, resentment, or other negative feelings long after someone has done something to hurt us.  While we don’t often like to admit it, holding a grudge is a common way we respond to the feeling that we’ve been wronged.

• Grudges come with an identity. With our grudge intact, we create an identity ofa person who was wronged. As much as we don’t like it, there also exists a kind of rightness and strength in this identity. We have something that defines us, our anger and victimhood, which gives us a sense of solidness and purpose.

• We must be willing to drop the “I” who was mistreated and step into a new version of ourselves, one we don’t know yet, that allows the present moment to determine who we are, not past injustice.

• As a victim, we are announcing that we are deserving of extra kindness and special treatment. Our indignation and anger are a cry to be cared about and treated differently, because of what we endured.

• Sometimes we hold a grudge while we’re developing our sense of self or value system. Once we can find clarity about our values, we forgive the other person and can move on from the grudge with growth.

Holding a grudge, or not backing down, can be a method to re-establish love for ourselves. After all, we all aim to have enough self-respect to stand up for ourselves and the things we believe in.

• The path to freedom from a grudge is not so much through the forgiveness of the “other” (although this can be helpful), but rather through loving our self. 

• To bring our loving presence to the suffering that crystallized into the grudge, the pain that was caused by this “other,” is what ultimately heals the suffering and allows the grudge to melt.

• To let go of a grudge we need to move the focus of the one who “wronged” us, of the story of our suffering, and into the felt experience of what we lived. 

• When we move our attention inside, into our heart, our pain shifts from being a “something” that happened to us, another part of our narrative, to a sensation that we know intimately, a felt sense that we are one with from the inside.

Resentment.

Resentment is an emotion that has the power to enslave us to the past. When we resent people, we give them a kind of power over us. It is based on a way of thinking that implies that we have been treated wrongly and deserve better.  (I’ve been wronged, and I deserve better.) 

• It flows from an entitlement mentality and feeds a victim mentality. What makes it so ugly is that it tends to turn us, an otherwise kind and reasonable person, into someone so angry at their life situation that it is nearly impossible to recover. Bitterness and resentment make it hard even for the people who love us to be around us.

• Resentment is a mental resistance to, a non-acceptance of, something which has already happened. An emotional rehashing, or re-fighting of some event in the past. We cannot win because we are attempting to do the impossible which is to change the past.

A Story on Resentment.

A merchant in a small town had identical twin sons. The boys worked for their father in the department store he owned and, when he died, they took over the store.

• Everything went well until the day a dollar bill disappeared. One of the brothers had left the bill on the cash register and walked outside with a customer. When he returned, the money was gone.

• He asked his twin brother, “Did you see that dollar bill on the cash register?” His brother replied that he had not. But the young man kept probing and questioning. He would not let it alone. “Dollar bills just don’t get up and walk away! Surely you must have seen it!”

• There was a subtle accusation in his voice. Tempers began to rise. Resentment set in. Before long, a deep and bitter chasm divided the young men. They refused to speak.

• They finally decided they could no longer work together, and a dividing wall was built down the centre of the store. 

For twenty years hostility and bitterness grew, spreading to their families and the community. Then one day a man, in an automobile licensed in another state, stopped in front of the store. 

• He walked in and asked the clerk, “How long have you been here?” The clerk replied that he’d been there all his life.

• The customer said, “I must share something with you. Twenty years ago, I was riding the rails and came into this town in a boxcar. I hadn’t eaten for three days.

• I came into this store from the back door and saw a dollar bill on the cash register. I put it in my pocket and walked out. All these years I haven’t been able to forget that. I know it wasn’t much money, but I had to come back and ask your forgiveness.

• The stranger was amazed to see tears well up in the eyes of this middle-aged man. “Would you please go next door and tell that same story to the man in the store?” he said.

• Then the man was even more amazed to see two middle-aged men, who looked very much alike, embracing each other, and weeping together in the front of the store.

• After twenty years, the brokenness was mended. The wall of resentment that divided them came down.

• It is so often the little things that finally divide people – words spoken in haste; criticisms; accusations; resentments. And once divided, they may never come together again.

• The solution, of course, is to let it go. There is nothing particularly profound about learning to let go of little resentments. But for fulfilling and lasting relationships, letting them go is a must. 

Refuse to carry around bitterness and you may be surprised at how much energy you have left for building bonds with those you love.