An Honest Man

by Michael Koryta

One thing about prison—you learned that time marched along with or without you.

That you shouldn’t bury the past and you shouldn’t idealize it, that either approach was poison. You had to consider the past with clear eyes and a calm heart.

Man plans, God laughs, right?”

Do not think of tomorrow or of yesterday. Be here now. A mantra for mindfulness, civilians thought, but Be here now was a fighter’s philosophy too. Act and react. Do not think beyond this moment, this space, this opponent.

“The word was respirer,” Annie Hutchison said gravely. “It’s a French word meaning ‘to breathe.’”

The only promise any human being had was a finite number of breaths. You just didn’t know the number.

The thing you feared most about yourself was impossible to miss in another person.

It wasn’t hard to sell a lie if it was what you felt. What you felt was maybe more important than the truth. More authentic.

Everyone was primal at heart, wanted nothing more than a safe den and a warm fire.

“The enemy must believe you have both the capacity and the will to deliver on anything you threaten—and that threat should be untenable to them.”

You arrived in this world with a corruptible soul. What mattered was whether you fought against that, and how long, and how hard.

So how did you preserve what you loved about your home? Tell the right stories and help people find their footing whenever you could. Understand that you were temporary. Understand that being temporary wasn’t a tragedy.