Life I

Joda, vi er her fortsatt, og vi skriver fortsatt brev. Men jeg har i alle fall selv litt tungt for å skrive her inne for tiden fordi det er mye annet som opptar meg. Da er det jo fint å brevveksle med L, som ser ut til å ha mye på hjertet. Dette er faktisk første del av en tale han ga på et toastmaster program han er med på der inne, og han sa at jeg gjerne kunne dele den på bloggen. Dere trenger ikke bare å se på det i forhold til å skrive med en innsatt heller - se like gjerne på det som noen visdomsord for livet ditt generelt. Legger ut siste del i morgen.

Life

Here in the last 8 years or so, I have often asked myself what is it that makes a life worthy? Can my life have any meaning to others besides the fact that I am here in prison? I learned in psychology that these questions should be coming several decades from now in the psychological time-line of the aging process. I had to wonder, am I ahead of my time or am I just getting older more quickly in here?

Those of you who were here for my icebreaker several months ago may remember how dark my path was after I received this life sentence that I am serving. It was a shroud of sadness, pain and death that covered my entire world. There was no hope. I wanted to die. Every day was a journey through some hell of my own making. Fear made for my only friend, and he hated me. I didn’t die though; I finally awoke from that horrid dream.

I still had a life sentence though, with so many years ahead of me. I still wondered what I had to offer the world around me, but I finally made the conscious decision to make the attempt. There is a good possibility that in the end, I will die in infamy, remembered only for the wrongs that I have done. But, and I am so thankful there is a but, there is some small chance that Life in here might not mean that the world and I are through with each other.

I know you all might find this hard to believe, but I have such big dreams and goals. Even in here, my mind and heart have not stopped planning to change the world, to change all words, our world in here, our world out there, and our world in the future. My mind is a never resting machine so full of… everything, that I sometimes have to force myself to stop. Some of you who know me, know that I have this insatiable desire to just do something.

I have many missions. I have so many missions that I am like a battlefield general, trying to juggle them all so that each of them have a chance to succeed. I must, because they are all very important to the success of my life, not necessarily the success of each mission but the following through of each mission.

For instance, one of my missions is a threefold mission. It is to foster a sense of duty to making amends to victims of a crime in my fellow inmates, of providing the vehicle to make those amends and to executing that vehicle. It is my belief that as person who have wronged society in some way, we have a duty to become better people and to become a force for the betterment of our society. Part of doing that is to become strong enough to admit to our wrongs and seek to offer redress to those that we have harmed. That redress can come in many forms. One of my projects is a compilation of essays done by inmates, sort of a, «What would you say to your victim or victims if you could talk to them». My intent is to publish these essays and donate all of the proceeds to victims charities. The funds will be donated in the names of all of the authors. As _______ passes out these sheets, I would invite each of you to write an essay and submit it.