No one has all the keys

2023-10-03

Dear friend,

Having keys in a prison makes you a target for violence.

You could be taken hostage by an incarcerated person who wants out. You don't want that.

Many doors in corrections are opened and closed from a central control room. But many doors are opened by key.

The more you carry on your keychain, the more freedom of movement you have. You also become more of a target.

Given the stakes, each correctional officer carries the minimum number of keys needed to do their job.

No one has all the keys.

Like making black cherry bitters from your own trees, there are some kinds of freedom that can’t be bought

I considered this today as I struggled to unlock the doors of my mental hell. Despite having crossed a big to-do off my list, my anxiety didn’t go down. If that didn’t do it, what would ?

I’ve been living under the fantasy that one of these days, I’m gonna get “organized.” And when that day comes—when I’ve finally “caught up” with my four whiteboards of notes, my two apps for tracking lists, and checked off everything on the backside of the grocery list—then my worries will clear. Productivity will be achieved. The path forward will be clear every morning. My inbox will sit empty every night.

Like today, no sooner do I get one thing done than I realize that there will always be 20 more steps. Nineteen-and-a-half of those will require me to solve a new problem or ask for help. I start kicking myself for not having all the keys.

Then I remembered, no one does.

My dad poked fun at me as a kid for seldom saying the words, “I don't know.” I felt I had to go it alone on every problem. I had trouble asking for help.

Today, saying “I don’t know” is the first step to my next discovery. I can always learn more by being curious about someone else. No one has all the keys, but everyone has at least one.

Still, my fantasy dies hard. When I look at Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Beyoncé, I assume they are enjoying their wealth and the freedom it gives them. They have all the help they need to fulfill all their dreams.

Or are they like a correctional officer with so many keys that they are a target?

Public figures like these will never again have anonymity. They will never be safe in a crowd or able to lie down in the middle of a park and forget the world. Self-sufficient? They need bodyguards. They need video surveillance. They need a head of security surveilling the bodyguards. They need to hire hackers to hack their bank accounts, just to keep the bank security on their toes. Lawyers, guns, and money bring drama and distrust.

In one of the gospels, Jesus didn’t say a rich man can’t go to heaven. Only that it would be hard— “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.”

Like the corridor on an airplane the eye is an opening, but it becomes a wall to someone carrying too much. I wonder if he meant that seeking freedom through riches is like that. You have freedom only within walls. The more wealth, the more to track and surveil.

Is there an alternative? Can setting down the keychain be the inner key to it all?

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” sang Janis Joplin. Over a thousand years earlier, in Nepal, Siddhartha Gautama was a prince who renounced his crown and became a wandering ascetic. In relinquishing the limits of power and control, Siddhartha became the Buddha.

Jesus, Buddha, Joplin—they didn’t come by their understanding alone. They had communities of friends and adversaries that helped them stay humble, and open-hearted to the humble. 

“Logs like friends,” I advise anyone new to lighting a fire in a wood stove. A single log burns slowly and smokes. Stacked together in a group, keyed together with a little airspace between them, a log in community burns bright.

It’s easy to look at the failure of our prisons to rehabilitate offenders and blame the person. “Nothing will change for someone who keeps making bad choices,” we might say.

But incarceration isn’t designed or set up to give people keys. The steel, concrete, and surveillance is focused on catching offenders at their worst. Too often they are isolated and left to smolder by themselves. 

Vermont’s correctional officers, by the way, are second-to-none. But they labor to provide security in a harsh, under-resourced system, with few tools for rehabilitation. The message that we are sending to correctional officers and incarcerees alike seems to be, “Figure it out yourself.” This message is repeated throughout our atomized society.

“The Bell” in Halifax, Vermont offers cool, fresh water to passersby, deep from the ~1844 village church bell.

What do you do when you have just one piece of the puzzle? I rely every day on about umpteen dozen (it’s a rough count) friends, family, and colleagues to find my next steps. Anxiety? Maybe it’s my body telling me to slow down and ask for help. When I can’t find the key on my own keychain, it’s likely to be hanging on someone else’s, and they’ll teach me how they made it.

In the orphanages of yesteryear, nurses were instructed not to hold the babies, lest they become habituated to receiving love. Feeding occurred via a bottle propped between iron bars. The results were predictable—death, suffering, shriveled bodies and lives. Hurt people hurt people, starting with themselves.

Today’s prisons are just as inhumane—and standing as they are, a manifestation of today’s achieve-or-be-left-behind individualism.

Puzzle pieces. Keys. Logs. If I ever opened a bar, I might call it “Mixed Metaphor.” 

In the meantime, can we agree that no one has it all, no one ever will have it all, and we all need each other?

Warmly,

Tristan Roberts

Quill Nook Farm