Is Happiness Possible in Prison?
This is the featured article of our August 2021 newsletter. It asks an audacious question, but it’s also one that’s at the heart of our work: can a person actually be happy in prison? Please enjoy reading, and contact us if you’re ever interested in contributing to our monthly nation-wide newsletter.
Kaleem Nazeem is a friend of our organization. He participated in some of our original mindfulness groups at the Tucker Max prison here in Arkansas where he was serving a life sentence. Things changed, though, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that sentencing a minor to life is unconstitutional. Because Kaleem was sentenced at 17, he was credited for time served and walked out of prison a free man shortly thereafter.
Kaleem is gentle and compassionate. He has a big smile and an easy laugh. His voice sounds wise, like someone on an educational radio program. His presence is one that exudes self-contentment and warmth. We once had a conversation in which I asked him if he was ever happy in prison. His demeanor turned solemn, and through tears he said, “My worst day in the free world is still better than my best day in prison.”
So, asking if happiness is possible in prison may seem like a crazy question, and I certainly don’t ask it lightly. I walk the halls of our local jail 3 days a week to teach an introductory mindfulness course to 40 men and 20 women and I see the stress in their faces, I hear the shouts from guards, I smell the “wicks” burning in the cells, and feel the constricted concrete walls entombing everyone inside. There’s nothing pleasant about it; much less happy.
Prison is, by design, the opposite of happiness. In fact, politicians and agency leaders often keep their positions of power by boastfully taking away anything that might seem favorable toward people who are incarcerated, lest they be labeled “soft on crime.” The food is intentionally barely edible. Beds are intentionally uncomfortable. Units are intentionally miles away from civilization. Prisons are not designed to exact justice for wrongs done to others; they’re designed to punish in the harshest manner possible. Knowing this, is it even reasonable to ask if one can be happy in prison?
I say yes.
One of my favorite Christian theologians often says, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody then it isn’t good news for anybody.” I believe the same applies to mindfulness. If mindfulness doesn’t “work” in the most extreme circumstances, then it doesn’t actually work at all. Because eventually an environment can be reached in which the principles and practices break down and no longer serve their function of bringing about peace, present awareness, and joy. So, if mindfulness cannot bring about happiness in prison, then perhaps it cannot bring about happiness in the free world either. At least not completely.
Prisons are where the principles and practices of mindfulness are put to the most extreme test. Like soldiers training to become part of an elite force, if you’re practicing mindfulness in prison, you’re the Green Berets and Navy S.E.A.L.s of meditation. You’re being exposed to the most intense levels of stress imaginable while struggling to maintain your practice. And like elite forces, your life may very well be on the line if the people around you feel threatened by the fact that you have something inwardly that they do not possess.
There is nothing easy, light, or simple about the pursuit of happiness in prison. But it’s a crucial subject to examine.
Mindfulness is a massive toolbox for mental, emotional, physical, and relational well-being. But like any toolbox, we have to know what the tools are for and how we’re supposed to use them. There are five mindfulness tools that I believe are the most effective at cultivating happiness in prison, if it is to exist at all. Those five are:
Acceptance
Equanimity
Lovingkindness
Compassion
Present Awareness
Let’s examine these one at a time.
1. ACCEPTANCE
Acceptance is one of the more difficult mindfulness tools to practice. Our natural inclination is to say, “If something isn’t as it should be, then let’s fix it!” Sometimes when we talk about acceptance, it can come across as passivity, or simply rolling over and letting life crush us like a wave crashing onto a beach.
But if you’ve been practicing long at all, you know that acceptance is key to a mindful and meditative life. I was actually at a beach recently with my family. As my kids and I played out in the waves, I felt myself growing weary from keeping my body upright. As much as I enjoy diving into a big wave or “body surfing” back to the shore, I’m apparently at the age where I can no longer do that for hours on end. So instead I did something simple: I lifted my feet. When a big wave came, I would lift my feet off the ocean floor and the wave would lift my whole body as it went by and then lower me gently back down as it continued its crash course to the shore.
Acceptance is like lifting your feet.
It’s not resignation - I didn’t get out of the water altogether. But I recognized the force and energy of the ocean and, instead of resisting it, I harnessed it. I became a participant rather than an enemy. And by doing this, it was impossible for the waves to do anything but gently lift my body up and gently place me back down. The force of the entire Atlantic ocean could not topple me, all because I lifted my feet.
Acceptance requires us to know the difference between what we can and cannot control. In prison, most outward things are out of your control, including how long you will be inside. So if your happiness is contingent upon things that are out of your control, you are sure to become miserable, and fast!
But even in prison there are still some things over which you have complete control. These are, by and large, your inner responses to your outward circumstances. You might not be able to change the length of your sentence, the food you’re served, or the way you’re treated. But you can control the way you respond to those things. Like the Apostle Paul from the Christian New Testament, you can be “content no matter the circumstances,” (a phrase he wrote from prison, by the way).
Acceptance takes time to practice, and you can start right now. Take just a second to lift your feet (literally). As you hold them suspended in the air, say to yourself, “I will learn to practice acceptance.” And then go about the business of learning what acceptance means for you in your present context.
2. EQUANIMITY
Another quick story about water…
I was once at a lake here in Arkansas on a cloudy summer day. We arrived just as storm clouds rolled in, and the twenty or so people sitting around the edge of the water began to pack their things and head for cover. We decided to wait it out under a large pavilion. Within about half an hour the clouds moved directly over us and then passed by. Blue skies peeked through toward the east. So I decided to go swim in the lake.
I was the only person in the water for as far as I could see. This particular lake is beautifully surrounded on three sides by huge pine trees. It’s not quite in the mountains, but it has that feel. The gray clouds reflected off the water, and the whole thing felt like a painting. I walked out as far as I could before plunging into the cold water and swimming toward a buoy about a hundred yards or so away. About halfway there, I came up for air and heard a crackle of thunder. I assumed it was part of the storm system that passed over us. But the tall pine trees had obscured my view of the other storm clouds trailing close behind.
I made it to the buoy and held on with my left arm as I wiped my eyes dry with my right hand. When my vision cleared I was staring directly at a massive thunderhead growing out of the trees. I could both see and hear the rain as it made its way toward the water. The wind was so strong it looked like the pine trees were waving at me. Before I knew it, the whole storm was right over me. I muttered a four-letter word and dove into the water, pushing off the buoy with my feet. I slapped my arms down as hard as I could; I kicked my legs in tight, fast flicks that rippled from my knees down to the ends of my toes. I twisted my torso with each arm reach, stretching my body as far as it could go. And with each stroke it seemed as if the storm grew stronger.
Every time I came up out of the water for air, I heard nothing but chaos. Thunder. Wind. Hard rain. The faint sound of my wife laughing at me from the safety of the pavilion. But then I’d plunge my head back into the water where, had I not surfaced for air, I would have no idea a storm was raging. Under the water there was nothing but stillness, calm, serenity, and peace.
Another breath - chaos.
Back in the water - peace.
Another breath - chaos.
Back in the water - peace.
All at once, I was experiencing absolute chaos and absolute peace.
This is equanimity - our ability to hold both things: the chaos and the peace, the light and the dark, the good and the bad, the stress and the serenity, as one reality. It’s what some philosophers refer to as “mutual arising.” A flower and a bee mutually arise. Even though a bee is not a flower and a flower is not a bee, neither can exist without the other. We must accept both if we want to engage mindfully with every moment.
All of life is a mutual arising of the wholesome and the unwholesome. Much like the Taoist yin-yang symbol, there is light in our darkness, and darkness in our light. We are both. Life is both. And yes, even prison is both.
The conditions of prison life are purposefully built to keep your mind set on the bad. You are told directly and indirectly that you are a terrible person who has done terrible things. You are caged and treated in some cases worse than we treat animals. You are limited from contact with the outside world. You have no agency. You are not permitted the very basic human freedom of telling a person, “No.” Each day repeats itself, keeping the “bad” in perpetual circulation as a constant reminder of your position as a number, as the property of the state.
And yet, you are not just an inmate, are you? Prison will not allow you to remember this, but you are a complex, multi-dimensional person with good qualities that most likely far outnumber your bad ones. You are not a number, you are not property. You are a human being made from the same substance as all other humans. You have a mind, you have feelings, you have gifts and talents and opinions. While it’s true that you are physically incarcerated, you are also mentally as free as you want to be. Both things are true. One does not negate the other.
But it takes practice to hold these things at the same time. It takes courage to stare into the face of our dark side, and it takes strength to learn to love it. When we can hold all aspects of ourselves simultaneously, we are finally free to begin the journey toward happiness.
3. LOVINGKINDNESS
Hopefully you practice this often already. Lovingkindness is a fundamental mindfulness practice that, at its core, is about wishing that all beings will be happy. But before getting to others, we always start with ourselves.
It’s like the much-used analogy of being on an airplane with a child. In the event of sudden loss of cabin pressure, the adult always secures their mask first before helping the child. If the adult passes out before securing their mask, they’re of no help to the child or anyone else.
In the same way, it’s quite difficult to wish people well when we don’t even have positive feelings for ourselves. If you believe the lie told to you every day by the prison environment that you’re no good, evil, and better off removed from society, then how can you possibly feel affection toward another person? What would even be the point? If you believe that you’re awful, then you have no reason to be kind or considerate or have any warm feelings whatsoever toward another person. Because if it’s true that you’re a terrible person, then the one you love will not reciprocate your affection, thus reaffirming your sense of awfulness!
So a crucial step in your journey toward happiness in prison is to actually be kind to yourself. To wish yourself well. In case you’re unfamiliar with lovingkindness meditation, it goes something like this:
May I be well.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be safe.
May I be loved.
May I be at peace.
This is the language I use for the practice, but it varies from person to person. You can add or remove phrases. You can change them up to whatever language resonates with you best. But no matter what words you use, the goal is to cultivate good feelings toward yourself in hopes that it will allow you to be happy, even if it’s for a fleeting moment.
After addressing yourself, you then extend the same words to someone else. They can be physically present with you or not. They can even be living or not. But start with someone for whom you have great affection. I often ask people in the jail where I teach to imagine someone they love just walked into the room and took a seat right in front of them. So close that their knees are touching. If this is helpful imagery for you, feel free to use it in your practice as you extend lovingkindness to someone for whom you have great affection.
Next, consider someone toward whom you’re just neutral. When you think about them, you have neither positive nor negative feelings. You might know them well or not. You might not even know their name. It’s common for people in my classes to think about someone from their past like a former partner or friend from childhood. Once you have this person in mind, recite the words of lovingkindness to them.
Sometimes focusing on a neutral person might seem odd. But the reason we do it is to help us act more mindfully when we see them again. It’s also to help us be more mindful toward all people and not just mindlessly orbit around each other without taking the time to know the people around us.
Finally, we work up the gumption to extend lovingkindness to someone for whom we have negative feelings, thoughts, or emotions. Again, it can be someone living or someone who has passed. It can be someone in the room with you or someone in another country. But allow their face to come to mind. If it’s too much for you to think about them, either pick someone else, or find a way to keep yourself grounded in the present moment, reminding yourself that you’re safe to picture this person without experiencing the harm they’ve inflicted on you. It might be necessary to keep your eyes open or hold something tangible in your hand like a pencil or a pillow.
Once you feel secure enough to picture the person in your mind, recite the words of lovingkindness to them. It’s common to feel something like a physical block you have to get past before allowing your mind to think positively about them. That’s perfectly normal. You might get halfway through and decide - like a young man in a recent class - that you’d rather kick the person in the chest and knock them out of their chair rather than wish good things for them.
Again, if that’s the case, maybe you’re not quite ready for them and you might need to choose a different person.
After you’ve extended lovingkindness to yourself and the three people listed, you end the meditation by extending lovingkindness outward from yourself to every corner of the world, wishing that all beings - human or otherwise - be well, happy, healthy, safe, loved, and at peace.
The more you practice this, the more your mental, emotional, and physical energy will align with feelings of peace, kindness, and, most of all, happiness.
4. COMPASSION
We sometimes lump compassion together with lovingkindness, but there is a subtle difference between the two. Lovingkindness is the wish to see all beings be happy; but compassion is the wish to see all beings be relieved of their suffering. Or, to say it a different way, lovingkindness wishes for people to be happy, but compassion asks, “What are you going to do about it?” Because we can wish all day, but at some point we have to take action.
Relief from suffering is at the heart of the Buddhist tradition. Suffering can be experienced on a large scale (like physical, emotional, or mental anguish), but it is more often experienced on a small, day-to-day scale. It’s a general dissatisfaction with life, a sense that we’re missing something, or that things are not quite how we want them to be. Craving is at the heart of our suffering - we want what we do not have, and therefore we suffer. The natural answer to the problem of suffering, then, is to get everything we want. Surely that’s how to end our constant craving, right?
Wrong!
Craving is not satisfied by getting what we want; it’s satisfied by wanting what we’ve got, by being content, at peace, and (dare I say) happy with our life exactly how it is. Because if we try to satisfy every craving with the object of our desire, all we’ll discover is that eventually the new wears off and it no longer satisfies like we hoped. This is sometimes called hedonic adaptation, the act of growing dissatisfied with something that we once believed would solve all of our problems.
One place where I often see hedonic adaptation is in people who have been recently released from jail or prison. For the longest time all they wanted was to be out of jail. They sincerely believed that their problems would vanish the moment they were back in the free world, and so that was all they could think about. In one reentry center where we teach mindfulness classes, the men in the 5-month program are sometimes even more miserable than the men and women inside the prisons where we also teach. Even though they spent weeks, months, or even years dreaming about getting to the reentry center, once they arrive they realize they’re still miserable. Some will say, “I’m still not home, I just want to be home!” But, guess what happens when they go home?
Exactly! Hedonic adaptation - they’re miserable at home too!
That’s what makes compassion such an important practice. Like lovingkindness, compassion starts with ourselves and then flows outward. We start by recognizing our cravings (I want freedom, I want intimacy, I want to choose what I eat, etc). Once we recognize the craving, we ask ourselves what we will gain by acquiring it (autonomy, feeling loved, a full belly, etc.). And finally we ask, “How am I already experiencing these things?” This question might require some work, but if you dig deep enough, you will discover that you most likely already have some of the things you crave.
You might not have physical freedom, but you have mental and emotional freedom - you can choose to be happy or miserable, to be kind or to be selfish, etc.
You might not have physical (or even emotional) intimacy with a loved one, but you crave it. The act of craving it is a sign that you are capable of love and connection. So perhaps this is a great time to learn to generate loving feelings toward yourself first (see the previous section on lovingkindess for ways to do this).
You might not have the freedom to, as someone recently said in one of our mindfulness classes, stand at the fridge in your boxers at 2am looking for something to eat, then close it, and then open it again even though it’s still the same food in there. And the food you’re served might only barely qualify as “food.” But you are nourished. And as you eat the food you’re served while incarcerated, it will make you that much more grateful for anything else you receive in the future.
As you learn to satisfy your own cravings, you start to see ways to compassionately set others free from their cravings too. Again, it’s not about getting everything you crave; it’s about finding satisfaction with what you already have. And there’s not a more difficult place to practice this form of compassion than prison.
5. PRESENT AWARENESS
Finally, the 5th tool for happiness is to keep your mind in the present moment. This is the key element of mindfulness, and, like acceptance, one of the most difficult. Our minds automatically look for the escape hatch out of the present moment and into a different reality. Whether it’s from boredom, stress, fear, pain, or general dissatisfaction, our minds would almost always rather be anywhere else. And our minds are really good at coming up with realities far more exciting than the one we’re in. No matter what’s happening in the present, your mind can always think of something better.
On top of that, most people would probably prefer not to stay present inside prison. If your body has to be there, at least you can take solace in being somewhere else with your mind, right? It’s much more pleasant to let your mind drift to the past and think about the moments you miss, or to the future and all the things you’ll do with your life in the years to come. And while it’s good to access our memory bank as well as make plans for the future, our emotional state will turn sour really fast if we’re never in the present.
Being present is simple but not easy. It’s the simple act of holding your attention in the present, but, as I said above, our brains are going to fight this. So what do we do when our minds naturally drift to the past or into the future?
The first thing we do is notice. We say to ourselves, “Aha! I’m thinking about something in the past,” or “I’m ruminating on something in the future.” You might also find yourself thinking about an alternate reality that doesn’t exist. For example, when I’m bored my mind will sometimes play out a scenario in which I travel back in time to high school but I have all my current knowledge and experience.
After we notice where our minds have drifted (past, future, or an alternate reality), we use mindfulness practices to return to the present. Those practices include:
Breath
Take a deep inhale through the nose and slowly exhale, also through the nose. Notice how the air feels as you breathe in, and notice how it feels as you breathe out. You can do this while seated in meditation or while walking down the hall or waiting in line for food. You can find your breath anywhere, anytime. Mindfulness teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, often encourages students to say to themselves, “I know I am breathing in, and I know I am breathing out,” which gives an added connection to the present moment.
Body
Focus your attention on your body. What’s your posture like? Where are you holding your stress? What’s tight or sore or tense? If you’re in a fully relaxed state, you can also do a short body scan in which you move your attention from the bottom of your feet all the way to the top of your head, noting each area of your body as you go.
Senses
Name what you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. Do this without judgement - without assigning positive or negative value to it. Just notice what your senses are telling you and let it be part of the present experience.
TAKE BACK CONTROL
The pursuit of happiness in prison is not going to be easy, but it is an opportunity to take back control over the one thing that no prison can touch - your inner being. You might have little to no say over where you sleep, what you eat, when you go outside, how long you talk with family members, and what you wear. But there’s not a prison in the world that can tell you how to feel. Guards cannot require you to be angry, depressed, or frightened. No cellmate can force you to choose hatred for yourself or for others. You, and you alone have complete control over what’s inside your mind and heart.
And I hope you’ll choose to be happy, even if it’s just for a moment.