by Hill Harper
Wow, man, I’m so proud of you for seeing so clearly. It makes me feel like everything we’ve been talking about is worth it. I can see why that letter got to you. You still really care about Vernon. And that’s good. You know? It’s too early to talk about now, but once you get your plan together, maybe you can pass on our method to him. If you tell me to, I’ll even send him copies of the letters I wrote you. Maybe he’ll grab on to them and use them as some kind of life preserver.
I’ve got a confession to make, though. You may not have even noticed it, but I disappeared a little on you, just like I complained about when you acted that way to me. It doesn’t matter that you’re used to people playing it that way—coming and going when they damn well feel like it without so much as cluing you in beforehand. But it took me a lot of time to write this letter. Your letter about Vernon came in the mail three weeks before I climbed onto this red-eye to New York. It was obvious you really needed me to answer.
Then why didn’t I? Man, I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this. This is very private stuff that I usually don’t even share with my closest friends. Think of it as a tribute to you. I just have a feeling you can understand.
Truth is, I was trying to deal with my own resentment. Your reaction to Vernon’s letter was too close to one of my own issues for me to be able to answer right away. My older brother, Harry, and I barely talk. Since our dad died in 2000, our relationship has become distant. I haven’t seen him in at least seven years, and the most we’ve said over the phone is a “Merry Xmas” and “Happy birthday,” which means we talk no more than two, three times a year. No letters, no e-mail, nothing. Most people don’t even know I have a brother. And here I am, “Mr. Giving Advice” . . . and I can’t even clean up my own shit. I’m ashamed. It makes me feel like a fraud. A hypocrite. Who the fuck am I to give advice when I can’t even talk to my own brother?
It’s all these years later, and I still haven’t let go of the resentment and pride and just forgiven him, and I feel ashamed about that. Here I’m trying to teach you about forgiveness and moving on, and I can’t even do it within my own family. I’m sorry to you. Sorry to my brother and his family, and sorry to myself. I need to be better. Maybe I should write my own blood brother a letter, huh?
When you see the other side of an issue and finally get in touch with the other person’s point of view—especially when it comes to love and family—it’s powerful. I guess guilt was part of it—guilt for never realizing he was suffering when he did things that I thought were wrong.
But it was more than guilt that came flowing in on me when I suddenly understood some of his pain. It was regret, the feeling that something had been wasted that didn’t have to be. The last eleven years, wasted. I kept brooding on the fact that if I’d been able to see him and the situation clearly then, he and I might have shared our lives together over the past decade. And then I reached a third stage regarding my brother: I felt empathy. Empathy is a deep sense of sympathy for a person, based on sharing their point of view.
EMPATHY MEANS FORGIVING
Your letter made me realize my brother’s pain, when I was just focused on mine. I understand your resentment at Vernon’s attitude toward life. But could you be playing the blame game I just described with him? Sure, Vernon was older and automatically served as a role model, but was Vernon himself old enough or mature enough to escape the influence of the street without a father or a mother to rely upon? Understanding that is an example of empathy. It was like one minor who needed protection trying to protect another minor who needed it. However, even as minors, we build our own house. Both of you are paying a price for the way you each built yours.
I just wonder if Vernon’s writing to you might be the perfect opportunity to square things with him. More than that, instead of fuming obsessively about what your big brother owes you, maybe it’s time to think of other ways to rebuild a family for yourself. For example, what about your own responsibilities for your own son? And yes, I know I need to listen to my own advice!
GRATITUDE
To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.
—Johannes A. Gaertner
One of the best ways to nourish a relationship is to express your gratitude. Gratitude is an extremely undervalued characteristic—we all need to express it, but few of us do, and fewer still express it well. So why don’t we try right now to work that muscle out a bit? It’s time to write a letter to someone who’s had a positive impact on our lives. Whoever it is, I’m willing to bet that as grateful as we are to them, we’ve been totally inadequate when it comes to expressing that gratitude. It’s time to change all that. I’ll write one, too.
Oh . . . shit, I’m really afraid I’m going to lose you after I say this next thing. But just think about it; you don’t have to do anything about it until you feel ready. Do you remember one of the things you said when you were talking about your aunt was, “her worry (maybe) about what was going to happen to me in the future”? Yeah, I know you think she was cold and only took you in because she had to. But her worrying about what was going to happen to you in the future doesn’t jibe with that exactly, does it? Also, did your aunt really have to take you in? She could have said no and let you go to a group home like the one R. J. is in now.
Are you following me? I don’t know your aunt. But something about her—a sense of responsibility for family, or maybe even some real affection for you—made her take you in and also made her worry about your future. I know you have a lot to complain about regarding her. I’m not putting you down for those complaints, and I believe that you’re telling the truth about them. But you can have both: complaints about things she did or didn’t do and gratitude for the things she did do.
Maybe taking you in was so much responsibility and created so much extra pressure in her life that she just didn’t have the time or energy to reveal the caring that was behind it. I don’t know for sure, obviously. All I know is that if you can bring yourself to the point of writing her a letter expressing gratitude, it could change everything. Especially if you could combine it with forgiveness for the mistakes she did make. And when your relationships change for the better, your life always changes for the better. I want you to have as many allies out there as possible when you get released. It would be very cool if you could get on some kind of positive footing with your aunt.
This is an exercise I myself have used on several occasions: sitting down and writing a letter to someone, mentioning the positive aspects of their impact on your life. You need to tell them how and why their giving has benefited you and them.
That’s the first part of the letter I hope you’ll write to your aunt. The other half of the letter is probably going to be a little harder. It’s a letter saying you’re sorry.
Saying you’re sorry, really sorry, is always hard, especially for people like you and me who sometimes feel that admitting error is a black mark on our self-esteem. We let our false pride and ego get in the way. But it actually takes more strength and courage to be able to swallow pride and say, “I’m sorry.” It’s one of the best things we can do for our own personal growth and evolution. If we say we’re sorry, then we can freely move on, not burdened with guilt, ego, or unfinished business. In doing so, you will feel more authentic and complete. A loop will be closed, a hole filled.
Put yourself in the shoes of your aunt receiving your note of gratitude and apology. How much impact would it have on her? How would she feel to get a note out of the blue saying she was responsible for something good in your life, that you apologize for some of your deeds and forgive her for some of hers? How would you feel if you got a note from a friend who remembered something hurtful he did months or years ago and finally came around to saying he was sorry?
No one ever wrote about the subject of forgiveness better than Simone Weil, Brotha. She was a French philosopher wh
o, although of Jewish birth, studied Christian mysticism and social activism, and died of starvation during World War II, perhaps because she refused to eat more than those deprived of food during that time. This is what Simone Weil had to say about letting go of the past and forgiving:
As long as we cling to the past, God himself cannot prevent this horrible fruit-bearing in us.
Having forgiven our debtors is to renounce the past, en bloc. To accept that the future is once again virgin and intact. . . .
In renouncing in one stroke all the fruits of the past without exception, we can ask God that our past sins not bear their miserable fruits of evil and error in our souls. As long as we cling to the past, God himself cannot prevent this horrible fruit-bearing in us. We cannot attach ourselves to the past without attaching ourselves to our crimes, for we are unaware of what is most essentially bad in us.1
It just occurred to me how cool it would be if you could reach a state of forgiveness—or call it “compassion”—for Vernon as well, despite that letter you just got that only provides more evidence of what a poor mentor he was for you. After that, who knows? Maybe you’ll get to the point of trying to square things with Yvette, and even your father.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting your reaction to Vernon’s letter. I told you already that I’m impressed with and proud of your new ability to see through all that jail swagga. Nor am I disrespecting your resentment at your father for abandoning you. And I’m not belittling the things you needed that your aunt couldn’t give. All of it is valid and understandable. If Vernon went bad and continues to get worse, it might even be the case that he now needs some guidance from you. Maybe that’s the reason he wrote. You’ve grown and matured since we started corresponding, so this could be your chance to become somebody’s mentor for the first time in your life. Wouldn’t it give you a sense of accomplishment if you could mentor your older brother?
Wow, I’ve been thinking about or working on this letter to you almost the entire five and a half hours in the air. We’ll be touching down in just twenty minutes!
Best,
Hill
FORGIVENESS
LETTER 23
Mental Health
Have you forgotten that, once we were brought here, we were robbed of our name? Robbed of our language. We lost our religion, our culture, our God. And many of us, by the way that we act, we even lost our minds!
—Khalid Abdul Muhammad
My Man,
It’s ten P.M. here in New York. Haven’t mailed that letter I wrote on the plane yet. I used the only time I had when I got back from the airport to fall out on top of the bedspread in my New York pad for about three delicious hours and then drag myself to a meeting with the director/producer of CSI: NY to discuss the exteriors we’ll be doing tomorrow.
It’s hot as hell here in the Big Apple, just like it is every summer. But that won’t stop ’em from pasting a few fake autumn leaves on some trees in Central Park to shoot scenes that are supposed to be taking place in the fall. The worst part of this is that I gotta be dressed like it’s fall for my shots! I’m supposed to be at a crime scene near the lake in Central Park, checking out a stiff they just dragged out of the water.
I really should be getting my winks pronto, since our call on set is for six thirty A.M. tomorrow. But I feel like I owe you a little more communication. I want you to know that I completely understand what you said on the phone tonight, that you don’t want to square things with your aunt just yet and that you’re not ready to write her a letter. And I get why you don’t feel like reaching out to Vernon, either. These things have to happen when you’re ready for them to happen. I mean, it took me eleven years to see what happened with my brother from his point of view. But you’re a newer, more perfect model than me, so it doesn’t have to take you that long. I’m saddened to hear about how down you say you are right now, that you’ve been feeling more and more lonely and depressed, and that you’re still afraid you’re not smart enough to turn your life around. You sounded really sad on the phone. In a back-door kind of way, you hinted that you still don’t feel worthwhile in any area of your life. It gave me a terribly sorrowful feeling in my chest. But even though we sometimes make mistakes, let each other down, and worse still, let ourselves down, you and I can do more and have more resources at our disposal than at any time in history.
PRISON PSYCHOLOGY
Do you know that you’re far from alone in the way you feel? I’ve been doing some reading about the psychological aspects of being incarcerated. Turns out that there’s a much higher rate of depression and other mental problems in prison than there is in the outside world.
I’ve got to admit I was shocked by the statistics I read. Seems that about 55 percent of incarcerated men in this country have symptoms of either depression or other mental illness, have been diagnosed as having a mental illness, or are in treatment for some form of mental illness. For women in prison, it’s even worse; about 73 percent are suffering from mental problems. And it’s no surprise that most incarcerated people, male or female, don’t get any treatment for their illness while in prison. This, common sense says, would be the perfect time to do so. But what can we expect when people are suddenly uprooted from their families and communities? When they spend the day trying to resist the dehumanizing forces of the prison industrial complex? When “punishment” is deemed more important than reentry?
I know that spouting a bunch of statistics isn’t going to make you feel any better, so let’s talk about you. You know by now that to see clearly where you are and what direction you’re heading, you’ve got to understand how you got there. You don’t heal a body or fix a car without first figuring out what’s wrong inside and what caused it. You can’t lead a life of value and impact without a slew of insights about why you failed to do so up to now.
Yes, the environment you’re in is responsible for a lot of the confusion, depression, fear, and resentment you say you feel, but we can’t make any dramatic changes to that with a snap of our fingers. Developing a political consciousness about your situation could be empowering, but I know you need more right now. Let’s use the “triage” system for your problems for a little while. Triage is a medical term that comes from a French verb meaning “to separate” or “to sift.” It’s a way of assigning degrees of urgency to medical emergencies to figure out what order to treat them in. So let’s call your bad mood an “urgent situation” and see if we can think of the fastest remedy for it.
In my opinion, one way you can improve how you feel is to talk with someone about it. I’m hoping there are some good counselors in the joint where you are and that they’ll offer an ear you can respect in talking about your emotions. But these are things that you and I can discuss, too.
I really do understand how you’re feeling; I’m not just paying you lip service. Sometimes it feels like you’re standing in front of one of those automatic baseball batting cages. The problems come at you one by one, and at first you tackle them that way, at a steady pace. Even though it’s challenging, it’s still doable. Then, suddenly, one day, it starts to feel like the pitching machine has gone haywire and the problems are being pelted out too quickly and with too much force. It’s like one baseball after another is coming at your head, and they’re too fast for you to hit them. They’re coming from left, right, and center. You can’t keep up, so you throw up your hands—not so much in surrender as in self-protection. You stop moving; you simply stand still. Is that an accurate description?
I’ve gone through “the blues” myself several times. Most recently it centered around rejection.
Not too long ago I had a screen test for the lead of a pilot for AMC about a politically ambitious Philadelphia DA. My dream has always been to be the lead of my own award-winning show, and this presented the perfect opportunity. With shows like Mad Men, The Walking Dead, and The Killing, AMC has been winning numerous awards, and it h
as become one of the most respected cable channels. And it was as if the role was written for me, given the fact that I graduated from law school. The character fit like a glove. I have read a lot of TV scripts, but this was—no lie—one of the best I’d ever read. I did all my work, studied real hard, and man, I wanted this job so bad I could taste it.
My agent was excited. I felt so connected to this role that I couldn’t imagine anybody else playing it but me. I was so excited about the entire thing. Everything seemed to be going my way, and I thought I had nailed my audition. I gave it everything I had, and I walked away thinking this job was mine for sure. The next few days were full of anxiety. I was walking on air one minute and then freaking out the next. Finally, my agent called to tell me that I didn’t get the job.
I have to tell you, I didn’t see that coming. I was devastated. Even though I used things like the mental reminders to get out of the funk, I’d find myself right back in it not long after. I was feeling the same way just this week with the ending of the ninth season of CSI. And then I got your letter, saying that you’re having a hard time, too. Even though it wasn’t a “happy” letter, it came to me as a blessing. You’ll find out why soon enough. But back to my story about the role.
For weeks, I walked around with what felt like a huge weight on my shoulders. What made it all the more stressful was that I didn’t feel that I could talk about what I was going through. I did try a few times. I confided in a couple of my close friends, but they just didn’t get it. I don’t blame them, though. When I listened to myself talking about my problems, it didn’t sound like I felt. They sounded trivial, not worth the energy I was putting into them. I probably had too much pride to acknowledge how down I really was. But all the shit in my life was making me miserable, and I had no clue how to deal with it. Or pull myself out of it. And you know what was even worse? I bet from some of the things you said to me last night, you can relate to this, too: I felt guilty about feeling down. Isn’t that crazy? It’s a weird, irrational feeling of thinking I let myself down and all others (family, friends), too.