Jarvis Jay Masters Quotes

I used to feel I could hide inside my practice, that I could simply sit and contemplate the raging anger of a place like this, seeking inner peace through prayers of compassion. But now I believe love and compassion are things to extend to others. It's a dangerous adventure to share them in a place like S.Q. Yet I see now that we become better people if we can touch a hardened soul, bring joy into someone's life, or just be an example for others, instead of hiding behind our silence.

I had accepted beatings, loneliness, and near-starvation as normal because those things had helped me to survive. Now when these women undressed me, it felt like they were removing a shield that had become a part of me. As they peeled off layer after layer, I began to feel my age and started crying. With my tears I shed each fiber of responsibility I had in caring for my sisters and brother. I was finally being cared for as a child, and so the child inside me opened wide.

I didn’t like the people who just wanted to hear about the terrible things that had happened to me. But the friends who wanted to bask in my fondest memories of the Prockses made me feel special, inviting me into my own sense of knowing a right from a wrong.

One day as we were doing our bookwork, a teacher suddenly asked us to help him remove all the desks and chairs from the center of the classroom. Then he sat us all down in a circle, brought out his guitar, and sang songs. We recognized the lyrics—the poems and stories we ourselves had written! After that I wrote more, searching dictionaries for new words to express myself. Every day we walked out of class believing that what we did mattered.

Looking at my life with fresh eyes, I learned how not to cause myself more pain by diving deeper into the hellhole of San Quentin. I stopped cussing out other prisoners or guards. I discovered that I could save a lot of energy by not becoming angry over small things like the food or the noise. I discovered that it takes a lot more energy to hate than it does to love- and that every bit of love I could conjure up meant that I didn't have to feel hatred.

I began to appreciate myself more by breaking the rules. I was putting myself in charge of why I was not going home, so having no home didn’t hurt the way pain does when you have no control.