Letters to an Incarcerated Brother: Encouragement, Hope, and Healing for Inmates and Their Loved Ones

by Hill Harper

  Nalini had a totally original way of proving her point. She’d come to the conclusion that by turning trees into artists, she could find out how and how much they moved. Believe it or not, she took a paintbrush and tied the end of it to a twig. She waited for the wind to come up and held a piece of canvas against the brush. As she spoke to us at TED, slides of sketches were projected behind her. Not by her, but by trees! According to her, the way that the tree moved the brush produced art. One of the slides showed a canvas painted by a western red cedar, and the other was a painting by a Douglas fir. They were as different from each other as a Picasso is from a Bearden.

  Trees seemingly rooted in the ground can still truly move and create.

  And now, what about you, Brotha? How many miles do you think the movements of your hands, your fingers, have covered in the seven months you’ve been locked up? How many miles have the repeated contractions of your heart covered in a year? You could actually figure this out if you knew how much movement each contraction of the human heart normally represents and you then multiplied that by your average pulse per minute, and then multiplied that sum by the number of minutes in an entire year.

  How many miles does the blood flowing throughout your body—the cycles of your circulatory system—cover in a year? What distance do the electrical signals passing through your nerves to your brain cover in a second, a minute, a day, a year?

  The biggest question of all is: What percentage of all that movement have you wasted—flushed down the toilet—with that letter to Cindy Franz? Are you actively creating a life of movement? Or one that is much smaller than the one you were meant to live?

  You see, it’s not just that people are never in the wrong place at the wrong time—like you claim you were when you got arrested. It’s that everyone and everything is in a different place at every second, and so are you, at every second of your life.

  You can move. But your movement must be guided. Undirected movement isn’t progress, it’s just movement. And you can’t always be about to do something . . . about to hardly ever does a thing. Your potential must lead to action and action to progress. Do you get what I’m saying? I know that Nalini Nadkarni, the queen of the canopy, does:

  I began to think about ways that we might consider this lesson of trees, to consider other entities that are also static and stuck, but which cry for change and dynamicism, and one of those entities is our prisons. Prisons, of course, are where people who break our laws are stuck, confined behind bars. And our prison system itself is stuck. . . . I decided to ask whether the lesson I had learned from trees as artists could be applied to a static institution such as our prisons, and I think the answer is yes.

  In 2007 she started a partnership with the Washington State Department of Corrections. She began bringing science to four of their prisons. Biologists and conservationists came to talk, and their ideas developed into conservation projects right inside those prisons, as more and more and more of the men locked inside began coming to science lectures instead of lying on their bunks thinking about Lauren London and jerking off, or watching TV, or lifting weights.

  It’s that everyone and everything is in a different place at every second, and so are you, at every second of your life.

  Then those same incarcerated men began growing prairie plants that were endangered so they could be shipped out and replanted in Washington State. And then they began to raise endangered frogs to be released into the Washington wetlands. And finally, they started to bring pictures of these growing, living things into the exercise yards and the isolation pods used by the most violent prisoners, the ones who are locked up twenty-three hours a day and aren’t allowed to take part in the conservation projects and are only allowed to exercise in the yards for an hour a day.

  Why put photos of those plants and animals in a place like that? I think those photos stuck up on the walls of the isolation pod or pasted to the walls of their exercise yard were an attempt to send the message that no one is completely locked up, on hold, shut down, stuck, “doing time”—whatever you want to call it. Because everything that is alive is in constant movement.

  You’re alive, moving and changing, no matter where you are or what happens to you. From your letters to me I’ve gotten a sense that you’re living in the fantasy world of life after prison and kind of sleepwalking through the time you’re doing. That’s a very passive way to live, man, and your passivity affects all of us! Ever heard of a Greek guy named Heraclitus, the philosopher? More than two thousand years ago, he pointed something out: “Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.”

  Most of what Heraclitus said only survived in fragments, but we do know enough about him to understand that his thinking was structured around one fundamental truth: the fact that everything flows, or as he was said to have put it: “Change alone is unchanging. . . . You cannot step twice into the same stream.”

  While you may believe that precious time is being robbed from you while you’re locked up, it is possible to transform all those idle hours in gen pop or even in the Box into all the time in the world to gain the power of knowledge. Right now, you actually have more time to get an education than most people on the outside. Plenty of time to start putting together a list of colleges, religious ministries, charities, and other services offering courses by mail or free books. I know I may sound like an asshole right now, but quit lying there on your bunk with “time on your hands” when you could think of it as time in your hands, waiting for you to mold it. How you use your time now will affect not only you in profound ways, but many who are involved with you, including your son and your aunt and me.

  Okay, Brotha. Make sure you hit me back. Let’s pick up the pieces and try to go back to where we left off. Speak soon.

  Peace,

  Hill

  P.S. I was speaking to my boy Jeff Johnson about this concept of time, and he told me he wanted to share something with you, so I’ve enclosed his letter. Jeff is a television journalist, activist, and motivational speaker on topics such as violence and voting rights. He was known as “Cousin Jeff” on BET’s Rap City. Check out how gangsta he thinks time is.

  Dear Brother,

  I remember you, Brother. I think of you. When I am working and traveling I often have you on my mind and I wonder . . . what are you doing with your time? Webster’s Dictionary defines time as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.” When I read that, it doesn’t really hit me. Time, in the Jeff Johnson dictionary, is the most precious natural resource that each human uses to create his or her unique life story. But when you look at your life, how have you utilized or wasted this most precious of resources?

  Time is the most gangsta resource because no human can control it in its purest form. It is the only thing you cannot make more of. You cannot get time back, and no matter how much power you have, you can’t change the universal laws of time. What you have (or don’t have) in life is a direct reflection of what you do with the time you have been given. But it is also gangsta because it is the one true equalizer.

  Rich people don’t get more time than poor. Suburbanites don’t receive more of it than those in the hood, and white people don’t have more hours in the day than people of color. Every person on Earth, you included, gets 86,400 seconds a day. Answer this: Have you wasted more of those seconds than you have used to create a life that you can be proud of? So now the better question is, what are you going to do with your time now?

  No one realizes the power of someone telling you what you can do with your time more than Brothers and Sisters who are locked up. Brother, when you decide to use your time to create a reality that is in opposition to why you were put on this earth, the universe (God) will begin to fight back and put you in a space that forces you to see your life for what it is. You were created for greatness—not for prison. Your sentence, your
bid, your release date, your probation are all reflections of someone telling you where you must spend your time, but no one can tell you what you can do with your time. My hope is that you realize the difference.

  You were created for greatness—not for prison.

  You remember how much you and others would complain about the time spent on activities and responsibilities that made you and them uncomfortable? “Damn, I gotta go to work,” “I don’t feel like going to school,” and even “I don’t have time to spend with those kids.” Brother, do you recognize that old saying that you reap what you sow? That is not always about karma, good and bad energy coming back to you, but it’s about your getting back what you invest.

  And if we keep it 100, so many of us have invested in more negative activities than we have positive. And just so you’re clear, I’m not just talking about Brothers locked up. But think about how much time you invested in the hustle. Learning how to get into it, how to perfect it, master it, and even teach the game to others. Well, your jail time is normally a reflection of that foul-ass investment. Those investments catch up to all of us in different ways, but the point is to remember how gangsta time is. It will pay you back, whether you want to collect or not.

  But what would happen if we all, you especially, decided to flip how we use our time? The things we dream about, the people we allow around us, the books we read, topics we study, prayers we lift up, service we give, and love we offer. What would our lives look like with positive investment of our most precious resources in those areas? See, it’s not about being soft, letting anyone get over on you, or being less than a man. But a real man is first and foremost responsible to what he has been blessed with. Those gifts you were given to lead other men, to inspire them and push them to go places they otherwise would not go, were not given to you to lead them to jail and death, but rather to power and legacy.

  I believe in you. I believe that the world is waiting on you to shift how you use your time. The world needs your energy and investment. The community needs your legitimate business, your time on the block empowering others, and your positive example. Your child needs that time that only Daddy can give. What will you do with your time, Brother?

  Some people have more time left behind bars than others. Some of us are out and act like we are not free, wasting time like we can get it back. Some people in prison have invested so much time in dirt that they will never see the outside again. So what? Invest time on the inside the right way, and your time on the outside will shift. I believe that God gives you life to remind you that you still have time to make today right, no matter where you are. So, my Brother . . . what will you do with your time? Time spent learning, loving, and living your best will define your life’s legacy. Live well, my Brother; the world needs your greatness.

  Yours,

  Jeff Johnson

  PRODUCTIVELY USE MY TIME

  LETTER 10

  A Leap of Faith

  Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

  —Martin Luther King Jr.

  Dear Brotha,

  Wow, that was an awesome letter you just sent me, man. I consider it a first in real communication. Does it embarrass you to hear that? I’m not just talking about the apology you asked me to convey to Cindy. It’s the fact that, in my opinion, this was the first time you revealed some true feelings. The first time you allowed yourself to be vulnerable enough to reveal some deep truths to me. No false bravado. No unnecessary middle finger in the air. None of that resentment or cynicism about your situation you were hitting me with before, none of that shit about being an innocent victim.

  No. You talked about your fears about your sentencing, which is coming up in a couple weeks, and how you really felt about the situation with your son, R. J., your sense of helplessness about not being able to do anything for him. Real-talk. No sulky rhetoric or blame this time. Just your anxiety and fear about your son, your son’s future, and your own. It was moving, in a good way. I’m so proud of you, man. Made me feel closer to you. Pause . . . not like that, pimpin’. Slow up. Ha ha.

  You also talked about something else that was buggin’ you out, and that was the “leap of faith” you say I’m asking you to make. A leap of faith—those are your words, not mine. I hadn’t thought of it that way, and I think it was brilliant that you did. You said I was asking you to give up all the prison codes that locked-up people use to get by—the deceit and the scrambles to rule the roost, the factions-against-factions and race gangs, the drugs that dull pain and boredom. I was asking you to take “a leap of faith” into a whole new game plan I was promising would assure your future, and that was scaring the hell out of you. Well, you need to get the hell out so you can get the hell out.

  FEAR AND TREMBLING

  What you wrote actually got me thinking about a philosopher I spent an entire term reading when I was at Harvard, as a way of dealing with my own problems. I was full of anxiety about a lot of stuff, some of which seems kind of silly now. You see, I’d just made the decision to pull out of a legal career and go into theater—acting—and was scared shitless about not making it. What the hell does scared shitless even mean? Anyway, I was scared about the “lawyer money” I was walking away from and whether or not I’d be able to pay back my student loans. From where you sit you probably think, “Those are some wack-ass fears, Hill.” But the thing about fears is we all got them, no matter who we are, rich or poor, Black or white. Fears don’t discriminate or play favorites.

  I kept picturing the expression on my father’s face when I told him I wanted to be an actor, the disappointment, almost a look of being betrayed. In my mind he was saying, “What!? You have a degree from Harvard Law School. . . . What the f— are you thinking? . . . You’re gonna throw all that away!?” And then, if I failed as an actor, it would be even worse. I’d have let my entire family down.

  So you see, I felt guilty about the consequences of my decision. I was full of anxiety, fear. As my anxiety increased, a so-called friend recommended that I get on the latest tranqs and antidepressants. I’ve always been afraid of that stuff, thinking that I can fix things on my own. I don’t remember how I ended up with a copy of Fear and Trembling by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.1 I think I might have bought it a year before for a course on ethics that I ended up not taking. On one of my worst evenings, alone in my dorm room, I picked up the book and started thumbing through it, in an attempt to get my mind off my fears. To my surprise, I found myself reading a nearly exact description of the feelings I was having.

  Kierkegaard talks about “fear and trembling” as a type of dread—a strange kind of anxiety directed at no particular object. It happens, he says, when we become aware of our own freedom, our ability to choose our own fate, and also come to the conclusion that the right decision may not even be based on logic or reason but just on intuition. Our fear is not only of what the unknown has in store for us but also comes from the temptation to backslide from our state of mental freedom into something that requires less responsibility, something that society can logically prove to be the best choice, the most moral position. But according to Kierkegaard, there is a higher mentality than socially sanctioned morality that goes beyond logical thinking. It’s called faith.

  In my opinion, I’ve been asking you to take a leap of faith, to go against almost every code you learned on the street or in prison, to go on this journey with me even if you don’t completely see where it’s heading. Life is designed to depend upon a higher power. Sure, I’ve spent a lot of time writing about the logical reasons for my point of view. I’ve said that when you’re incarcerated you’re an unwitting upholder of the prison industrial complex and its profit machine. I’ve told you that Cindy Franz called being locked up volunteering for slavery. I gave you lots of examples of convicts who turned incarceration into a positive experience and emerged as educated, accomplished people after using their time in prison
effectively. But I’ve also talked to you about your authentic navigation system and claimed that there is a voice in you that will define your rightful place in the universe if you can only get into the habit of listening to it. The despair and anxiety you’re experiencing now might be the terror anybody would feel when they first dare to listen to their authentic voice and—without understanding why—follow it down a new path.

  Kierkegaard pointed out that a leap of faith is often an ordeal. He said that it’s always accompanied by dread and the possibility of regressing into an easier state of nonfreedom by simply doing what society, family, and community say is right. He means that it’s always easier to get pulled back into our old habits. That’s why most people go back to prison after that exit. I want you to be the person who begins to change that statistic.

  As I lay on my dorm bed way back when, reading those pages, I suddenly realized how relevant all Kierkegaard’s philosophical issues were to my situation. Wasn’t I flying in the face of convention by defying everything that my family and community had expected of me and rejecting a so-called prestigious legal career in favor of acting (a job you don’t even need a high school diploma to do)? Realizing that faith alone in my choice would give me the best chance at succeeding gave me permission to stop trying to think of an argument that would convince my family—and especially my father—that my decision was a rational one. Understanding the reason for my anxiety, my dread—which was based on my inability to support my choice with logic—suddenly put me at peace. I gave up any attempts to explain my choice to others and began relying 100 percent on my intuition that studying theater was the right and only thing to do.