Return To Honor

I recently saw a trailer for a new movie, “The Visitor.” I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m certainly going to because the tag line hooked me: You can live your whole life and never know who you are…until you’ve seen the world through others’ eyes.

The trailer went on to show a man bored with his life who, by chance, is exposed to the lives of people less fortunate than him. In a few short minutes, I was swept up into his new outlook as he began to reach out to others and use his professional skills and insights to make life a little better and more meaningful for them.

Have you looked at the world through others’ eyes? I have…and now I can hardly do anything but that. I was born into a fairly respectable family…a career Army officer and mother who raised us as morally as anyone in the Midwest, where we were all from. But he bailed out early in my life for reasons known only to his soul, and I was left to make crucial decisions way too early for that busy little mind of mine to handle. As a result, what should have been a pretty decent future became for a while a series of jail and prison cells.

I was forced to discover that life was very different for a whole lot of people outside of my protected military upbringing. Those people had lived through outrageous challenges that most people can only imagine through graphic portrayals of prison life in movies, books and television programs.

What I experienced, once I got over the initial fears and posturing that goes on between ethnic groups and different cultures, was a common human thread…men who were struggling with the same fears, angers and remorse…albeit often hidden…that I was.

Once I began to use my education and communication skills to help them better understand their behavior and how to change their attitudes and their outlook, I discovered a whole world of men who could overcome anything…and many who actually wanted to. They just didn’t know how…nor had anyone on the outside willing to help them make the lasting changes needed. More often than you might believe, I had hardened criminals with tattoos and scars all over their bodies in tears as they told me stories of their childhoods and how much they wanted to be respected and cared about by society.

Whether you’re dealing with prisoners or former prisoners, or people who are merely prisoners of their own minds and negative attitudes, the willingness on your part to see the world through their eyes can and will make the biggest difference in bringing about deep and lasting changes in the way we live our lives and build toward a more meaningful future. If you will pause from time to time and be willing to see the world through others’ eyes, your world will change for the better…guaranteed.

Don Kirchner

http://ReturnToHonor.org

In response to the two previous comments posted, I invite them as well as new readers to ongoing dialog about something very simple yet profound in this process I have come to call “a return to honor.” This isn’t just about former inmates. It’s about all of us “returning” to a state of mind and heart that allows for changes to be made in the way things have come to be. It means returning to what made this country truly great, and what most of us secretly, if not openly, yearn for…which is people caring about one another again. It’s a about r-e-s-p-e-c-t…at its most basic and fundamental level.

By respecting another person’s point of view, or their right to exist on this planet as a human being, does not mean tolerating or condoning bad behavior. It means simply to treat them as you would have them treat you. If they’ve committed a crime, they deserve to be punished…but only according to the nature and seriousness of the crime. They need to feel the shock of being removed from society and left alone to consider their crimes…even to endure harsh punishment, if need be…but along the way, they also need to know that there is a way out. They must know that for them there is a way back to society, with honor, if they are willing to make changes. In order for them to make changes, most of them need to be educated and re-directed…and then welcomed back into their communities with a chance to give back to society in proportion to what they took from it.

As we near the point of an “official” launch of something I set into motion over ten years ago, I feel it important to establish what this “Return To Honor” concept is all about. It’s about people, essentially, and how to begin respecting one another even though we might not agree with each other about politics, culture, religion or other important things. What is important is that we at least make an effort to understand cultural differences, and causes of ill behavior rather than reacting to the outward symptoms.

What makes me an expert on the subject? I’m not…but for 2 1/2 years I was an inmate in the federal prison system where I learned first-hand the best…and worst…lessons in human behavior, from people on BOTH sides of the fences and walls. I discovered that freedom is not a physical thing, but is emotional and psychological. I learned more about personal freedom from long-time inmates than I ever learned on the outside…and I’ve observed more people in prisons of their own minds on the outside than I did those who were actually locked up in prisons and jails. I laughed harder, cried more and felt more deeply about common human frailties, avarice and heroism on the inside of prison walls and jail cells than I have anywhere else, before or since.

The Return To Honor program was conceived at a time when my eyes, heart and mind first started to open to what really causes criminal behavior…and more importantly, what keeps it going…and its concept is simple but profound. With even a modicum of respect for one another, no matter what one’s personal history may be, we can make a measurable difference in criminal behavior that will have a ripple effect on every strata of American…and even global…society. Crime doesn’t happen because people are innately criminal. It happens because we don’t address the causes of crime. Instead, we react to it out of fear, ignorance and indifference…and we inflame it with racial and social prejudice and favoritism. No matter how “fair” we might think ourselves to be as a nation, we have created a correctional system that is anything but fair. It’s an incubator system where crime only begets more crime…and woe be it to anyone who enters it thinking otherwise. As individuals, some of us might make it through unscarred and untainted, but rarely “corrected.”

My comments and my views are not pointed at anyone in particular, nor as an outcry against “the system.” It’s what it is because we have allowed it to evolve the way it has. My respects to those who work in the justice, law enforcement and correctional systems. They have a horrendous job to do, which only gets harder and more complex as we continue to ignore the simplest approaches to human beings who have made mistakes. Some are incorrigible, granted. But the majority can and want to change. They just don’t know how, where to begin or whom to trust. My contention––and it’s been confirmed by many hundreds of people on both sides––is that we must be stern and resolute in correcting criminal behavior, but we must be willing to understand the causes and treat those. We do that with respect…and with common-sense approaches to creating bridges back “home” for those who have erred…many of whom never knew anything better.

In so doing, perhaps we can all “return to honor” as a nation of intelligent, compassionate people who take care of their own. With over two million men, women and children locked up somewhere in this country, every one of them someone’s father, brother, mother, sister, aunt, uncle or cousin, they ARE “our own.” Statistically, each one of them affects five to ten other people, so you can rest assured that any meaningful attempt to assist any of them in their successful return home WILL make a measurable difference for all of us.

More to come.

Don Kirchner