How to cope in prison. You have to learn to ‘do your time’.

You are humbled, stripped of everything you were and everything you had, put into a small cell, sometimes with up to two other people with just a bed, toilet and sink. You are surrounded by evil people and have to obey the guards, eating and doing what and when you’re told.

‘Doing your time’ means first learning acceptance of what and where you are and what you can and can’t do. Then integrating into the society, you can’t escape people, however obnoxious they are, so you have to forge a relationship that you can both cope with. A form of mutual,support will always work best. What you were and what you had is gone so you have to accept the new you and do your time. Where possible in peace and happiness.

Prison is analogous to life, we are all a free spirit being put into a meat prison and when we’ve done our time, being released from it. To have peace and happiness in life we have to learn to ‘do our time’, accepting any limitations of who and what we are and making the best of what we can. This changes throughout life and if we mourn for what we were or what we had, or are dissatisfied with who we are and what we have, we will suffer unnecessarily.

You can be perfectly happy in prison, you just have to learn to ‘do your time’.