The emotional transformation has been slow and painful.
There is a shedding process that happens, and while I would love to make this story short — like an Instagram post where I have some epiphany — the reality is that habits, especially emotional ones, take time to marinate in your belly before they slowly change the flavor of your thoughts and your interactions.
There is a long period where you go through this change with one foot forward into the new you, while the other lingers back, not quite ready to take the weight off it.
I am going through that moment right now.
Nice is not the same thing as kind
Part of my personal identity now is having come to realize that I am not a nice person. But I am a kind person.
I will never be considered nice. I hope that people who know me think of me as kind.
What prison taught me about letting it slide
The prison experience, and the fallout from everything before, during and after, has radically changed me.
Many people are taught to go along to get along — which is another way of saying tolerate it when someone is being rude or inconsiderate. Without question that culture worked its way into me and into how I moved through life.
But in prison, when somebody disrespects you on purpose and you allow it to happen without responding, without setting a line in the sand, you have set a precedent. You have diminished yourself in your own eyes. Your own sense of worth drops. And the person who treated you that way is emboldened.
Not only does that person think less of you — they change too, little by little, believing they can act that way in the world without consequences.
The advice that quietly costs you
This is a tough balancing act. We have to strive to be considerate and kind without allowing others to affect us.
But I don’t think we can keep accepting the prevailing advice. Just ignore it and it will go away. Don’t stoop to their level. On the surface these seem like good counsel. I believe they slowly diminish your own value while inflating the value of the offender.
What I have watched over the last thirty years is our society breaking into two groups. One group says and does rude things. The other group tolerates it. The first feels emboldened to do more. The second becomes more and more offended.
Standing up for yourself without becoming the problem
Where I’m struggling in my emotional recovery is knowing when to speak up, how to speak, and at what level of intensity to respond.
In prison it’s much easier. Start with your words, and if that doesn’t work, use your fists. Very binary — and with severe consequences.
In the real world it’s different. There are lawyers and police to deal with, not to mention the social fallout.
So where I am slowly finding my footing is in being the person who does say something. But only when it’s appropriate, and at the correct level of intensity for the situation. This is very hard for me — this moderation of an increased willingness to confront.
We all have interactions with people that cross our path that we wish we had handled differently, or better. Maybe a witty retort comes to us hours after the moment has passed. Some zinger of a comeback we wish we’d had holstered for next time.
I don’t have this solved. I’m telling you where I am, not where I’ve arrived.
But I know this much: being nice was never the same thing as being good. And staying quiet was never the same thing as being kind.