Now this girl is imprisoned and she has no responsibilities whatsoever —no-one expects anything from her. She has “things” to fill in her days, weeks, months, etc. On Saturday mornings she calls her family and the family have come to make a ritual of it. The family gathers at the parents’ home, with her close friends also attending, and they have a general chat, as if she were right there. During the other 6 days, 23 hours, and 50 minutes of the week, the girl can do anything she wants. A general goal is to get herself freed, so she can devote part of her time working on her defence, reading law books, praying, and doing all the things that are permitted in Italian prisons. The rest of the time she can do whatever she likes (especially given that the general goal of freedom is also voluntary, i.e. she could choose not to appeal her sentence, as some people do). There are certain things, a lot of things, permitted in Italian (as in Australian) prisons; she could choose to read about Italian culture, the language, history, other studies, other books. She could pass the time doing things that aren’t all that different to what she was doing “on the outside”, living her generally carefree life. Now she can even afford to be more carefree: she doesn’t necessarily have to cook for herself, worry about where the money for food or shelter will come from, etc. She is a supported citizen (perhaps even better supported than some of our pensioners and elderly)—and nothing in return is expected of her. If she misbehaves, how will she be punished? She is already in prison. One day she may decide that her plight for freedom is redundant, that she has no hope, and she may give up trying. What then? Well, then off to read or study or whatever other “entertainment” activity she’s allowed.
Now, I don’t mean to romanticize prison life, I know most other co-prisoners aren’t going to be “nice”, that prison staff aren’t always pleasant to deal with (to say the least), that there are certain things mandated of all prisoners (work details, etc.), that small unchanging spaces can be nauseating, and that there can be extremely harsh punishments for acting out of line. What I mean to say is that prison life doesn’t carry with it things of social life which can be just as imprisoning, for example, the obligation to provide for your own meals and shelter, family responsibilities, fear of judgement, fear of job loss, poverty, family conflict, etc. I mean the social aspects of being human. (Similarly, I don’t aim to make any sort of comment about the Amanda Knox case or the treatment in Italian or Australian prisons. I am using that as an example, only.)
Me, if nothing were expected of me, I’d read. I’d read all day; I’d be happy to. I’d get up to eat, shower if I felt like it, then read, read, and read. Which leads me to ask myself two things: 1) Who is freer? and 2) would life in prison be that much more different or unpleasant than life as it is now? Interesting. A third question could be whether my life is actually lacking if prison life seems to be not that different to how it is now—and why.
Dr. Ted Kaczynski (aka “The Unabomber”) once said in an interview “what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods—and that's what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit”. Prison, imprisonment, the isolation, the confined spaces, aren’t what is horrible and punitive about prison, it is what it does to the human spirit, to a human spirit that has truly had better before. And the worst thing is that sometimes we don't even need the physical confinement to be imprisoned.
Another Story about Freedom
Do you know what loneliness is? It’s not a lack of friends; it’s a lack of purpose. The drugs won’t kill you. The drugs are just an escape from this emptiness that nothing can fill. Putting a man in a cage is not the punishment. Taking away his job, his people, his love of life, that’s the torture. “Why, God, must I go on living?” they say in their moments of distress.
A man can have it all: life, health, faith, company; but without love or purpose he is nothing. It’s easy to see from the outside and see a beggar dragging himself around in his rags with a bottle by his side, a syringe, some magical powder. It’s easy to hate him for his weakness. But behind that, there is a man. A man like you or me. A man who is not lacking a house or a bed or clothes. That man lacks a purpose. Where do they sell that? Where? It’s not at the bottom of any bottle, or in the embrace of one or another stranger’s body. We might search for it at the bottom of the ocean with the same luck of finding it as finding water in the Sahara. Where? Where is it?
Yet that same man would change his clothes, his city, even his life for a purpose. An embrace from someone that sees you, that loves you regardless of whatever you may be, that wants to know more—your name, at least. Sometimes we don’t ask because we think that that way we are giving others their “freedom”. Freedom from what? Nobody is freer than that beggar on the street without a purpose; and there is no-one more miserable than he. Who wants the freedom to be miserably alone? That freedom sounds mysteriously like rejection/neglect, disinterest, like the disgusting silence that follows a bomb explosion. Where is that beggar? That beggar isn’t in your way; he’s not invading your public space. That beggar is free—and there is no worse punishment than that.
—26/11/2008
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