Around 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, there was mail call in federal prison. I walked from my cubicle to the front of the dorm and waited while the guard sorted the envelopes and started yelling out names. Some days, my name was called a lot.

It fed my ego. People who read my blog sent letters to thank me. They said they appreciated learning more about life in a prison camp. They liked that I wrote about holding lawyers accountable, sharing regrets, and documenting how I was serving my sentence. One letter praised my “high levels of introspection,” my willingness to explain how and why I went to prison.

The problem was that I wasn’t always living authentically. I was a fool because I was telling people in a daily blog what to do, and I wasn’t following through.

Judge Wilson told me at sentencing, “You enabled this conduct. You turned the other way for money.” I carried that tendency into prison. I kept turning the other way.

The Prison Friendship That Exposed My Hypocrisy

Day one, I formed a friendship with a prisoner I called Arthur in Lessons from Prison. He was disciplined and deliberate. He got me into running, fitness, and diet. While we exercised and formed a friendship, I began writing a blog with help from my now-partner, Michael Santos. That blog became Lessons from Prison. In it, I moralized, which I’m prone to do, telling others: 

“If you’re in prison, you need to understand the tendencies, the mannerisms, the idiosyncrasies that led you to the wrong side of prison boundaries. Document your journey. Show your friends and family how you have changed.”

I was on my high horse and missed what was right in front of me. I wasn’t paying attention to my own actions; I was just happy to judge others.

In the dorm one day, Arthur looked at a man and said, “What type of fool gets a tattoo of ‘Too blessed to be stressed’ across his neck?” I walked away, saying nothing.

Another day, a man in our dorm brushed his teeth loudly and made a racket in the bathroom. Arthur said, “This guy, my God. Has he ever been civil anywhere in his life? Where was he raised, in a barn?” I turned the other way.

In the kitchen, I worked with Jeff. Sometimes, to break monotony, he’d yell, “Five minutes! Five minutes!” Arthur would sneer, “What sort of fool yells ‘five minutes’ in prison?” I said nothing.

Then the track. I walked laps with a man whose body carried “1488” and “2316” — tattoos tied to white supremacy. We worked together in the kitchen, and sometimes he’d ask for my advice. One afternoon, Arthur pulled me aside and said, “You’re a Jew. What the hell is wrong with you associating with white trash?” I didn’t answer. I shrugged and kept walking. Later, I learned the man had been in a Utah state prison at 19. He told me he felt he had to get those tattoos to survive. That didn’t excuse anything, but it made me more sympathetic to him than to Arthur.

The final straw came when my friend Sergio was getting ready to go home. He had a job at a fast-food restaurant. We celebrated. We gave him a hug. As he walked away, Arthur said, “What a fool. I would rather stay in prison than work in fast food.” I told him, “That’s it. I’m done with you.”

Months late.

I Had Been Writing One Thing and Living Another

Abraham Lincoln said, “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” In prison, I felt bad, in the middle of the night, standing in the chow hall, or reading a letter from someone who “loved” my blog. That’s what living inauthentically feels like. You carry it until you change.

In April, I wrote You Might Still Be in the Cave (I Was Too). I admitted, “For a long time, I told myself I had it handled… I was wrong. And the longer I pretended, the worse it got.” Same thing here. I stayed quiet because I didn’t want the discomfort of confronting a friend. I told myself I was focusing on his “good parts.” In reality, I was protecting my comfort, not my values.

And I knew better. On those walks with Michael around the dusty track at Taft, he’d hand me pages and say, “Read this, then tell me what you’re going to do with it.” We’d talk Plato, and he’d remind me of the line I quoted in that Cave newsletter from Good to Great: “What got you here won’t get you there.” I knew it. I wrote it. I didn’t live it, not at first.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “You can’t expect honesty from people who lie to themselves.” I was lying to myself. I called my silence compassion. It was cowardice.

Living by Your Code When It Costs You

Refusing to fake it just to be spared is easy to say; harder to do. Speaking up forces you to live by your own standard, to stop admiring someone’s discipline and start holding them, and yourself, to the code you claim to respect.

The man with the racist tattoos? I don’t excuse it. But learning why he did it, a terrified teenager in a violent state system, made me more compassionate toward him than toward Arthur and, frankly, myself. Arthur and I had every advantage: two great parents, good schools, opportunities others never had. We were raised to know right from wrong. We squandered it.

The Muscle You Have to Build

Living authentically isn’t a switch; it’s a muscle. Early in prison, I fell back on old habits: rationalize, avoid, keep the peace. The first rep is the hardest. The second is easier because you can point to the first. Over time, you build ethical muscle memory.

William James said: “The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.” If you do the right thing enough times, it becomes part of you. You don’t even think about it. You act in alignment because you’ve trained it. Like an athlete, you rely on reps when the pressure hits.

A clean slate only matters if you write on it, and if you don’t, someone else will. You can’t think your way into authenticity. You build it.

Closing the Loop I Ignored

When I ended my relationship with Arthur, my only regret was not doing it sooner. He could never find perspective or empathy.

The prisoner with numbers tattooed on him told me about Utah State Prison and what he did at 19 to survive. I felt more sympathy for him than for Arthur or for myself. He was trying to climb out from something ugly he’d done to stay alive. Arthur and I had ladders the whole time and still found a way to climb down.

The man with “Too blessed to be stressed” on his neck? He was living the culture he knew, and he was one of the best men I met in prison. Jeff yelling “Five minutes!”? He broke monotony and made people laugh, something generous in a place built to grind people down. Sergio? He grew up without a father, raised by his older brother, and he took the job that was available, went home, and started again.

Instead of admiring what they had overcome, Arthur criticized. And for too long, I allowed it.

George Orwell wrote, “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” The truth here is simple: I was a fraud. I told others what to do and didn’t do it myself. I turned the other way for too long, before prison and again inside. I let a friend demean people who were climbing out of holes we never had to dig.

What Changed and What I Ask You to Do With It

When I finally told Arthur I was done, it was late, quiet, and long overdue, and a promise to stop asking others to do what I wouldn’t do myself. Since then, when that instinct to “keep the peace” shows up, I treat it like training: do the rep. Say the thing. Walk away when you have to. Write the slate today and make it visible.

When I write the Rockefeller and Robert Greene pieces, the through-line is the same: move. Don’t quote your way through a storm. Don’t wait for permission. Build when it’s quiet so you have something to point to when it’s loud. 

(Am I allowed to write I love that last line I wrote? I got the idea from a book I read last month, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.)

If you’re going to prison and broke the law as I did, learn from me. Invest the time to understand what led you there. It will make the experience more productive and help set up the next phase of your life. Ask the questions Montaigne forces on me: What did I justify? What am I avoiding? Has my perspective changed, and how can I prove it? Then show the answers with actions you can submit, not sentences you can say.

I wasn’t honest with myself. I turned away. I won’t do that again. I know what I allowed. What about you?

Justin Paperny