The Opiate of Acquiescence
I preferred the kitchen work, although often beyond my strength, to any other that fell to a prisoner’s lot, because of the glimpses into the outside world it occasionally afforded. But I never permitted myself to dwell upon the fact that at one time I had been the social equal of at least the majority of those with whom I thus came into passing contact, since to do so would have made my position by contrast so unbearable that it would have unfitted me to do the work in a spirit of submission, not to speak of the mental suffering which awakened memories would have occasioned. I soon found that both my spiritual and my mental salvation, under the repressive rules in force, depended upon unresisting acquiescence—the keeping of my sensibilities dulled as near as possible to the level of the mere animal state which the Penal Code, whether intentionally or otherwise, inevitably brings about.
I have been frequently asked by friends, since my release, how I could possibly have endured the shut-in life under such soul-depressing influences. I have given here and there in my narrative indications of my feelings under different circumstances. Here I may state in general that I early found that thoughts of without and thoughts of within—those that haunted me of the world and those that were ever present in my surroundings—would not march together. I had to keep step with either the one or the other. The conflict between the two soon became unbearable, and I was compelled to make choice: whether I would live in the past and as much as possible exclude the prison, and take the punishment which would inevitably follow—as it had in so many cases—in an unbalanced mind; or would shut the past out altogether and coerce my thoughts within the limitations of the prison regulations. My safety lay, as I found, in compressing my thoughts to the smallest compass of mental existence, and no sooner did worldly visions or memories intrude themselves, as they necessarily would, than I immediately and resolutely shut them out as one draws the blind to exclude the light. While I thus suppressed all emotions belonging to a natural life, I nevertheless found, whenever I came accidentally in contact with visitors from the outside world, that my inner nature was attuned like the strings of a harp to the least vibration of others’ emotions. The slightest unconscious inflection of the voice, whether sympathetic or otherwise, would call forth either a grateful response or an instant withdrawal into the armor of reserve which I had to adopt for my self-protection. But this exclusion of the world created a dark background which served only to intensify the light that shone upon me from realms unseen of mortal eyes. Lonely I was, yet I was never alone. But, however satisfying the spiritual communion, the human heart is so constituted that it needs must yearn for love and sympathy from its own kind, for recognition of all that is best in us, by something that is like unto it, in its experiences, feelings, emotions, and aspirations.