{"id":20043,"date":"2019-05-28T19:50:07","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T19:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe7a000626c3"},"modified":"2019-05-28T19:50:07","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T19:50:07","slug":"five-keys-inner-strength-five-years-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/five-keys-inner-strength-five-years-prison","title":{"rendered":"Five Keys to Inner Strength From Five Years in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"
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October 1, 2018, marked five years since I was imprisoned. My physical surroundings today are ironically similar to what they were after my arrest back in 2013. I\u2019m in the SHU again (Special Housing Unit, aka \u201cthe hole\u201d). It means permanent lockdown, separated from the general prison population, in a small cell. There is a slot in the heavy metal door for food trays, a small steel toilet, a concrete bunk with thick rings at four points (I guess that\u2019s how I\u2019ll get strapped down if I go crazy), chipped paint on the walls and floor with gang names and desperate Bible quotes etched in, and everywhere thick marks counting the days spent here by former inhabitants (some collections are terrifyingly large).<\/p>\n

The initial shock of entering the cell \u2014 and all it meant for my immediate future \u2014 gave way after a few days to a helpless, restless dread and a burning need to get out. This feeling had to be stuffed down to avoid madness, and eventually a numb acceptance took over, but it was a precarious arrangement. Desperate frustration simmered constantly beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

When I was first arrested, I was put in the hole against my will at three different prisons as they bounced me across the country from San Francisco where I was arrested to New York where I was prosecuted. The only reason I was given for this was that I was \u201chigh profile.\u201d After six weeks, I was let out and never returned … until now. This time, I\u2019m actually glad to be here because the alternative is life-threatening.<\/p>\n

I was forced by some other inmates to make a choice: assault someone or be assaulted. Morally I knew I couldn\u2019t initiate violence against another, but if I refused, I would be seriously hurt and would face an uncertain future, not knowing how long I\u2019d be in the hole under protective custody or whether I\u2019d be sent to another prison where I\u2019d meet the same fate.<\/p>\n

When the dreadful situation arose, I managed to ask for protective custody before anything happened to me. I was immediately cuffed and escorted to this cell where I\u2019m writing from. I chose the hole rather than hurt another man.<\/p>\n

When they dropped me in the SHU after my arrest, I did my best, but it was a tough six weeks, going from a life of freedom straight in. I broke down when I got my first phone call, and, after one week, I completely lost track of time and grounding. It makes me anxious just remembering it.<\/p>\n

Maybe after five-plus years I\u2019m used to doing time, but I think it\u2019s how I\u2019ve done my time that has made me mentally tough, that has made the difference between how I handled the hole back then and how I\u2019m handling it now. I want to share this hard-won wisdom with you. Here are the five keys to inner strength I\u2019ve learned from five years in prison.<\/p>\n

Patience<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My first night locked up was in a San Francisco holding cell: just painted concrete, toilet and sink. There was blood splatter staining the wall. I was so impatient for that night to be over. I almost felt I couldn\u2019t survive it, as if it would never end. Of course it did, but I\u2019ve never felt time move so slowly.<\/p>\n

Prison has its own pace. One time, getting two pages of medical records printed took three months. I once had a faucet running day and night for five weeks before it was fixed. A clogged toilet took two months and a complaint to the Office of the Inspector General. Another time, I spotted a letter addressed to me in the corner of a guard\u2019s office. It had been there for four months.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned that patience means doing what you can today then letting go. It means settling in to this moment and letting things come in their own time. Impatience and boredom do not bring results faster, but they do rob you of your happiness here and now.<\/p>\n

Will to Fight<\/strong><\/h3>\n

After a long day of working in the lab as an undergraduate research assistant back in 2005, my mentor asked me if I had ever boxed. I told him no, nor had I been in a real fight. Compared to many, I had a sheltered upbringing in safe schools and neighborhoods. I had no need to fight. He pulled out some 14-ounce gloves and we went a few rounds in the hall outside our office, blowing off steam and having fun. From then on, whenever the stress of work got high, we\u2019d get the gloves out at night before heading home.<\/p>\n

When I was arrested and thrown in jail, I faced an opponent in a real fight for the first time in my life. The prosecution wanted to take my life as I knew it. They wanted \u2014 and still want to \u2014 keep me in a cage forever. I found myself on an alien battlefield and my opponent had every advantage. Being initially locked up in a detention center was like fighting while under water, most of my energy going to day-to-day survival and dealing with prison bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

At trial, I stepped into the ring hoping for a chance, for a fair fight. When my lawyer wasn\u2019t allowed to cross-examine the prosecution\u2019s witnesses and I wasn\u2019t allowed to call my own, my hands were tied behind my back. And when the prosecution was allowed to hide corrupt agents from my jury and present unreliable and tainted digital evidence, they were handed a metal bat. It wasn\u2019t a fight. It was a massacre. The defeats kept coming, first at the appellate court, then at the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

I remember one time when I decided to stay out late on the prison yard. The sun was setting, and it was just me and a few others out there. I walked over to a metal picnic table where a man I\u2019ll call Big Mike sat alone. Big Mike was the biggest person I\u2019ve ever met. He weighs twice as much as I do, and his arms are as thick as my legs. He once told me that he doesn\u2019t work out because he gets too big and scares people. We chatted for a while and he told me about the arguments he was preparing for his next motion to the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to keep working on my case every single day until I go free,\u201d I said, inspired by his efforts.<\/p>\n

His expression became stern. He stared me down then went into a half hour rant that only ended because we were called off the yard for the night. \u201cYes you do,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one is going to fight for your freedom like you. These people got you tied in a knot and you\u2019ll never get out if you don\u2019t struggle and fight. You\u2019re fighting for your life. They took your life from you. Only you can get it back.\u201d He was still going as we walked into the cell block.<\/p>\n

Big Mike had fought his entire life. He grew up on the streets of Philly. He fought to survive, and now he was fighting the last shreds of doubt and defeat still left in my heart. He won that night and lit a fire in me that\u2019s been burning ever since.<\/p>\n

The will to fight is primal. It\u2019s in all of us. Like me, many of us have never needed it and it lays dormant. Yet you don\u2019t need to wait until you are under attack and your life is in danger to learn to fight. You can fight for who you love, for what matters, for what you believe in, like your life depends on it. And truly it does because a life worth living is worth fighting for.<\/p>\n

Forgiveness<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A few months after I was sentenced, I lay down on my bunk after the cell door had been locked for the night. As my conscious mind slowed down and sleep approached, the faces of those who put me away for life bubbled up and captured my attention: the judges, prosecutors, politicians and agents, and they were looking down on me with mocking smiles. A cocktail of emotions accompanied these images, including anger, frustration, helplessness, even the beginnings of hate. My heart beat fast and my mind raced until I snapped fully awake and lay there trying to drift off again. After a few cycles of this, I sat up in bed. This wasn\u2019t the first time I couldn\u2019t stop these negative feelings. I had to get a grip.<\/p>\n

While I was tossing and turning, those people were probably sleeping, comfortable and sound, in big comfy beds in big comfy houses. Or were they? Maybe they were also sitting up at night tormented by the thought of all the people like me they had condemned. Or maybe they didn\u2019t care and rationalized the pain away. The truth, I realized, was that I had no idea. And further, all my anger wasn\u2019t hurting them one bit. It was all right there with me in that cell. I wasn\u2019t getting back at them by holding a grudge, but I was poisoning my mind.<\/p>\n

As revolting as it felt at first, I had to forgive them. I purposely cultivated thoughts like \u201cIt wasn\u2019t personal, they don\u2019t even know me\u201d and \u201cTheir hearts must be so calloused by what they do, I feel sorry for them.\u201d I focused on feelings of love and kindness and imagined them radiating out and healing those who had hurt me. I don\u2019t know if that had an effect on any of them, but I certainly started sleeping better.<\/p>\n

As time went on, I became ruthless with these hateful thoughts whenever they entered my mind and would rewire them immediately as I had that night. I could not indulge in them because I had come to learn this simple truth: hate does not hurt the hated, it hurts the hater. It\u2019s been years since I wasted my energy hating those people and I\u2019m so much better off for having forgiven them.<\/p>\n

Faith<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Being condemned to grow old and die in prison with two life sentences plus 40 years is like staring into an abyss. My future as I knew it disappeared, replaced by darkness and uncertainty. In the face of this nightmare, faith became a matter of survival.<\/p>\n

The day I was sentenced I returned to the detention center and was given hugs, condolences and a hot meal from my fellow prisoners. When I found some time alone that night, I saw two roads before me. One was a downward spiral. I could see that the further I went down, the harder it would be to claw my way back. At the bottom, the demons of despair, hatred and crushing sadness were waiting to devour me. The other path soared upward, but I couldn\u2019t find the steps. There weren\u2019t any. There was no reason to hope that I could hold onto.<\/p>\n

In the following months, I had to leap, stumble and scramble toward that upward path. With all evidence to the contrary, I had to have faith that God would see me through whatever was to come. I realized I\u2019m not strong enough on my own to keep from falling into that ever-present abyss. It may be irrational to believe without proof, to have faith, but it\u2019s also irrational to forsake the hope, love and joy that faith brings, because it gives you the strength to fight and ultimately win. In a situation as desperate as mine, keeping faith alive is the difference between freedom and a slow, caged death.<\/p>\n

Acceptance and Gratitude<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are endless opportunities for suffering in prison. You can suffer when they lock you in the cell and you feel like you\u2019ll explode if you can\u2019t get out; when your back spasms from the hard bunk; when you\u2019re sick and feel isolated; when you notice the filth; when the door slams and locks behind your loved ones after a visit; when you feel like you\u2019re drowning and just need one last day of freedom to breathe; when you wish you could keep sleeping but you have to get your boots on because what if a riot pops off; when you imagine the shank you saw pierce the last man is piercing your flesh; when you realize you haven\u2019t had a moment of privacy in years and everything around you is cold and hard; when someone dies and you never got to say goodbye to.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had countless occasions for suffering. In each case the pain is unavoidable. It hits without warning and you feel it, whether you like it or not. And of course, the nature of pain is to not like it. Our natural reaction is to resist it, to fight it, to push it away or down. This aversion to pain is suffering.<\/p>\n

To resist what is so and long for something better is to suffer. Pain and suffering seem hopelessly entangled in prison, but I\u2019ve learned that suffering is not the unavoidable consequence of pain.<\/p>\n

While pain is inevitable in my circumstances, suffering is entirely optional. Pain, even emotional pain, is just a physical sensation: the knot in my stomach, the ache in my heart and head. It is neither positive nor negative on its own. It just is. Suffering is our negative response to pain which compounds and amplifies it and drags it on and on.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come to believe that the antidote to suffering, the path out of it, is acceptance and gratitude. Acceptance turns \u201cI can\u2019t take another day in this hell\u201d into \u201cI am where I am, and yes, it hurts.\u201d Gratitude goes a step further: \u201cAt least I have clean water and enough food. At least I\u2019m alive and surviving. Thank you.\u201d Suffering always arises in the context of inadequacy because you want what you don\u2019t have. Acceptance and gratitude flip your context to one of abundance because you are focused on what you do have and are thankful for it. It\u2019s the difference between misery and joy and it\u2019s available to each of us every moment of the day.<\/p>\n

So here I am in the hole, counting my many blessings and refusing to indulge in suffering. Hopefully, you can benefit from these five keys to inner strength without having to go through what I have. That would be a nice silver lining, to know what\u2019s happened to me can make a difference for you. That is one more thing to be grateful for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The five keys to inner strength that Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, has learned from five years in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2906,"featured_media":20044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[829,87,808],"class_list":["post-20043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-culture","tag-prison","tag-ross-ulbricht","tag-silk-road"],"author_data":{"id":2906,"name":"Ross Ulbricht","nicename":"ross-ulbricht","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/ross-ulbricht-promo-image-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/sketchoriginal.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2906"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}