Rain in and of itself, or any kind of weather for that matter, does not produce a particular reaction in human beings. And when it rains or snows, some people act as if they are done for the day. It is not possible in these conditions to produce a spectacular day. Yet, if it rains in a third world country after a year-long drought, there is dance in the street, rejoicing. The rain does not produce the reaction. Our reaction is learned behavior, capable of being changed.
Do you remember what you thought of the idea of physical intimacy with another person when you eight or nine years old? What happened to that revulsion by the time you were nineteen or twenty? If you have ever gone for a long walk with someone you love in the warm gentle rain of summer, you will never condemn rain automatically. According to most meteorologists, sunny days are far better than rainy days and any inclement weather creates a “bad day.” This simply reinforces the fact that circumstances rather than one’s attitude control how things turn out.
We are at present surrounded by one of the less-than-wonderful offshoots of a free market economy known as capitalism. Manufacturers, stores, people selling anything, present their products as if it were the thing that will make you life perfect.
“If you drink this diet soda, your body will look like that and then you can have one of these to play with and then you will be happy.”
A few years ago, the other diet soda made Britney Spears its spokes person, no doubt because she is learned and articulate. Unfortunately, in this case she, too, thought for awhile that happiness and satisfaction were to be bought or discovered externally. I hope for her sake she knows today that her worth and value in the world is a given, not things to be achieved or accomplished.
“The last of the freedoms – to choose one’s attitudes in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” If Victor Frankel wrote this in a concentration camp, and he did, what do you think this ability says about us and our capacity to be in charge of our attitudes?
If you chew Doublemint gum, you get two people to play with.
There is a new gum that apparently will make you a better kisser.
John Belushi, regardless of whether you liked his humor or not, was at the top of his game when he died, Very wealthy, Robin Williams was his best friend. From all outward appearances, John had the world at his feet. When I ask people why he is dead, the overwhelming majority answer, “He died of a drug overdose.” Drugs were the vehicle of his death. The cause was that he thought happiness and satisfaction were to be reached, achieved, someplace to get to.
Happiness and satisfaction are places to come from, not to get to.
They are decisions, not results.
It is commonly held that circumstances and things create one’s attitude. It is always a matter of choice. John Belushi is dead because no amount of money or success can produce happiness.
The Core of Who We Are
Following is a very bold assertion. As with all things, I don’t want you to believe it. Rather, I would ask you to look in your experience, no one else’s, yours, and see if it is true. The core of who you are, who I am and who all people are is that we want to be loved and able to love. We want to know that what we did here on earth counted for something and we want to know that we are powerful enough to take charge of our own lives. Isn’t that the essence of who we are the core, if you will?
The place I discovered this “core” was the Maximum Security Prison in Somers, Connecticut in 1979. A few weeks before my visit there, I had been watching the television around Noontime and saw a small portion of the Phil Donahue Show. Donahue did some great work before trash and celebrity took over most of “talk” television. Nick Groth, PhD., was the guest along with three convicted murderers and rapists, silhouetted behind a scrim. It was what their conversation lacked that caught my attention. There was not one word of blame assignment or rationale given for behavior.
Anything that had to do with where violence, especially what seemed random violence interested me in the second half of 1979. Unfortunately, my research into the root causes of violence in our society was dramatically escalated twenty-nine years ago when one of my children was raped at the age of eight. We needed a quart of milk and a can of Comet. This was a middle class suburb of Akron, Ohio, on a bright sunny afternoon. The grocery store was across a large field, easy walking without crossing any streets. I could see no reason not to let her go.
A man in his late teens or early twenties stopped my daughter on the way back from the store to ask her to help him find a dog he claimed was lost. As it turned out, there was no dog. He covered her mouth, dragged her behind a hedge and raped her. Bloodied and scared to death, Joy made it home. The emergency room and the police added to the trauma Joy survived physically and mentally. Years later she would tell me that when I would acknowledge her courage, the truth was she was putting on a good act. She is well, a great person, whose life is affected permanently. Today she is a well-respected Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a premier plumbing company. Of course, I am prejudiced and she is an incredibly loving, bright and caring human being.
On that day in 1979, I discovered that I can kill and would have, I am sure, if I had caught the man then or probably within a year. Notice I did not put the capacity to kill in the past tense. Capacity is capacity. Once you know you have it, you have it. Ask your friends who have served in the military, if they will talk about it, what the experience of knowing you have the capacity to kill is like. It did not take long for me to realize that made me no different than any other killer, no different than the man who raped my daughter. I probably thought I had a better “reason” in those days, I know better now. The behavior we fear the most is within us.
I knew then that all the things I though most important in my past meant nothing if we lived in a world where children were raped. Helping found one of the pilots for Upward Bound, teaching, being the youngest YMCA Director, the Director of Development of a great K-12 day school, the assistant to Helen and Leland Schubert in giving away a piece of the 3M fortune, nor being Community Affairs Officer of what is now Key Bank, nationally, made one bit of difference. I had to come to some understanding, to be at peace about what I needed to do.
Be clear that this work is selfish. It is my intention to see violence end in my lifetime.
That is why it was imperative I understand these inmates and their mentor, Nick Groth. When I spoke to Nick on the phone that day, he said I would have to come to Somers in order to understand what had happened in the lives of these inmates and why they wanted to help me understand the root causes of violence in our society.
Having not a clue as to what I was getting into, I agreed. As I drove the roughly five hours from Phippsburg, Maine to Somers, Connecticut, my emotions were all over the place. I wanted to do this. Why did I want to do this? I was going to meet and talk with people just like the person who had raped my daughter less than a year ago. Was I crazy? Should I turn back? How would I react? Could I keep a civil tongue? Would any of this make any difference?
When you enter a maximum-security prison, it is clear by what you can see and what you are asked to do that this is serious business. Razor wire is everywhere. Once identified and checked in, you surrender your wallet (identification, credit cards and money were coins of the realm), your keys, your glasses (because the metal arms make a great weapon) and your belt. After you pass through the third or fourth steel gate or observation area, you know you are inside. At that point, feeling absolutely no more confident than on the drive down, I meet Nick for the first time. The first group of inmates we spoke with was on break in an open area. Engaging them in conversation, Nick asked how they got there, who was responsible for them being in prison. The stories varied and there was a long list of those responsible, mother, father, judge, cop, lawyer, a gang, teachers, bad breaks and finally the victim, “If only the bitch hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have killed her.” I was greatly relieved when Nick said it was time to move on. It crossed my mind that I would probably say something that might upset this group and I could be the next reason for violence.
Nick took me to an area in the prison where we met with a number of inmates, all of whom he had worked with for at least a year. They too had awful stories about their childhood. One man in particular told of being locked in a closet for ten days at a time. He explained that that was where he ate, slept, urinated and defecated and that it was easier to be in the closet than deal with the repeated beatings and sexual attacks by his father and his father’s friends when they were on a drunken rampage.
We spent hours in that same room, talking about violence, its causes, my anger, their crimes and their lives now. All of these inmates were “lifers” with no possibility of parole. This conversation was not being recorded. To a person, these men knew that they had been the cause of their own criminal lives. Were there mitigating factors of childhood abuse, violence and criminal neglect? Absolutely. They now knew that they had absorbed this violence and made their own. One man who had committed three combination rape/murders, the man who had been locked in a closet for days on end came to me at the end of the day, at a time when no one else was in earshot. This man told me that he was deeply sorry that my daughter had been raped. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he meant it from the bottom of his heart. That was the beginning of two very powerful learnings. The vast majority of people who commit violent acts (over 95% of all convicted violent criminals) were themselves the victims of physical, sexual or verbal abuse. Terrorists invariably see themselves righting a wrong, either real or imagined, triggered by a climate of or direct experience with violence. What I learned in this unusual laboratory is that it is possible, given two critical factors, for even the most violent people to develop meaningful, productive, contributory lives, even within the confines of a maximum security prison. The fact that this is so speaks volumes in terms of what we can do.
Nick Groth led me to vast amounts of information. The most important piece he gave me was about why he had been able to get through to these men at Somers. I assumed it was his training, degrees, and his scholarship. Nick assured me they were not it. The degrees were a factor and the critical factor from Nick’s point of view was getting these individuals to know that they are loved (i.e. cared about, valued) and that they are able to make choices. Nick had been successful in separating these men from their behavior powerfully enough for them to realize they were worth something. Why else would a group of men spend an extended day talking with the father of a child that was raped? It must have been like being with the fathers of their own victims. IF IT IS POSSIBLE IN THIS ENVIRONMENT, WITH THESE MEN, IT IS POSSIBLE AT EVERY MOMENT IN EVERY ENVIRONMENT WITH ANYONE. Including you. This man, through Nick’s love and guidance had come to know the core of who he was. What I discovered about Robbie, a convicted murderer and rapist, inside the maximum security prison in Somers, CT, is that all people, underneath all behavior are people who want to love, be loved, know that they count and that they are powerful enough to take charge of their own lives. No exceptions, no exclusions.
What is required is a conscious commitment on the part of all of us to acknowledge the core of who we are and operate out of it at all times. Not simply when it is convenient, always. It is not complicated and it is going to require merciless discipline on everyone’s part.
It is because we have at the present moment everybody claiming the right of conscience without going through any discipline whatsoever that there is so much untruth being delivered to a bewildered world.
Mahatma Gandhi
People who are well, know that they are loved and are powerful enough to make good choices, don’t damage other people. All of the damage in our society comes from people who do not feel well about themselves. The young men who did the shooting in Colorado were part of a group everyone treated as outcasts, isolated from the rest of the student body. Well people don’t shoot their classmates. Well people don’t rape children or anyone else. Well people don’t beat their spouses. Well people don’t engage in road rage. Well people do not mock or verbally assault their peers. Well people don’t create puppet governments with tyrants as leaders and ignore or worse abuse the rest of the country’s population. Well people do not allow tens of thousands of people to die needlessly each week of hunger, starvation and persistent hunger. Well people don’t kill anyone. Well people don’t damage others. Period.
Every Person
There is a story called “The Miracle Worker,” which talks about how Anne Sullivan was able to get through to Helen Keller. To call this a miracle is to miss how Nick Groth got through to Robbie and Helen reached Anne. The story is very good at chronicling the process of Anne meeting the undisciplined Helen Keller, daughter of rich and indulgent parents. Helen had no manners, allowed to eat off anyone’s plate at dinner, responding to no one’s requests. With discipline and loving-kindness, Anne is able to get through. “A Miracle,” we proclaim. Nothing count be farther from the truth.
Anne Sullivan’s early life was rough. Orphaned early, abused and beaten, she went from foster home to foster home. She and her brother were finally shipped to an asylum, their favorite place to play, the morgue. An asylum in the late 1800s in Massachusetts was where they sent anyone who was “mad,” unwanted pregnancies, deformities, the diseased. Anne’s brother died while she was there.
Along came a Priest and a ward worker who knew that Anne’s life had been tough and asked if she would like to get her own eyes treated and get out of this place? She did. Her eyes cured, she went to the Perkins School and learned to work with those who could not see or hear.
So why was Anne Sullivan able to reach Helen Keller?
Because she had mastered the circumstances in her own life and knew there were only two choices for Helen, either find a way to communicate or spend the rest of her life on the floor, playing in the spaghetti.
The power to master the circumstances in your own life resides within you. You have the capacity. Any capacity you admire in another resides within you. You are Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Christopher Reeves and Mahatma Gandhi.
