Getting the Most Out of Life.

Every work day at the Public Defender's Office I deal with folks that are suffering. They are accused of doing awful things, either because of the awful choices they've made, or, occasionally, because of bad luck or mistakes or malicious mis-statements of others. Whether they are unlucky, or just experiencing the consequences of their own wilful acts, all of them were kids once. Most of them have, or at least had, someone who loved them. What do you tell the kid who is going to prison for a long time for an act, apparently isolated and not in their general character, based on a snap decision that occurred over the space of a maybe only a few minutes? So what do I tell them? Mostly, I tell them that St. Paul, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King did some of their best work in jail or prison. I don't guess I can say it any better than Morgan Freeman did a few years ago:



Of course, you don't have to be in the system to be miserable. I think it was Richard Lovelace who wrote "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage, Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage.” Guess we gotta free our minds, too.