Sharing life experiences offers real-world lessons
By Robert Browning
Last quarter I was lucky enough to meet a person by the name of
Curley James. He is now behind the 15-foot fences of Kilpatrick
Prison Camp deep in the Malibu Hills and that is where he’ll be for
at least the next year.
James is only 15 years old. Throughout his life, he has already
seen more death and felt more pain than anyone should throughout an
entire lifetime. He is dealing with a previous life where security
and survival came from gangs and a present life where he fears
love. He fears it because it is not there.
Luckily, I met James simply because I enrolled in a linguistics
1 class. This class was unique because it had attached to it a
program called Field Studies Component, which attempts to give
courses an extra dimension of real-world education by relating the
real world with in-class study. They give you a variety of service
programs to choose from, but the one that struck me was tutoring
kids in the Prison Coalition. It’s sort of funny, for what I was
supposed to do was record the linguistical tones and speech
patterns of James’ voice which would relate to my class because I
would eventually be comparing different dialects within the same
culture.
But in reality, none of that happened. None of that could
happen.
James is a person, not to be lumped into any theory nor probed
by any pre-designed question. He is a person with a heart, in a
place where no one listens to him and he just needed someone to
talk to and someone to listen.
That’s where I came in and my experience confirmed once again
that true education cannot come from any book or any lecture. True
education, true wisdom and true knowledge come from pulling your
head out of the books and falling into the pain and love around
you. Education happens when two people come together and share
their lives openly and honestly with each other. And it is through
that connection that we begin to know what it growing means.
I shared my life with James, and he shared his life with me. And
through this sharing, we both learned more than we could ever have
learned in any book or in any class. Through that sharing, we
learned about ourselves.
One day I asked James if he had ever written an essay before. He
said, "Sure I have. I’ve written one on the Constitution, one on
the Bill of Rights, one on the Vietnam War …" and so on. But, I
then asked him if he had ever written an essay about himself and he
looked at me sort of funny and said no. The next week, James began
to explore himself through writing, and with his permission to
print his inner thoughts in the Daily Bruin, this is what he
wrote:
Sometimes I think, that I have to get out of the life that I
live. But still my actions are not the same. Even though I seek a
better life for "myself" I choose the wrong path to walk.
As I walk through this path "alone" I get scared.
It eats me up inside that no matter how much I try, I can’t
change my ways. As all the obstacles go by, my life changes … and
I try, so help me God I try. I feel as though my life is like a
whirlpool, and I’m at the bottom of it.
To tell the truth, "I think my life has no meaning." I’m against
a unknown power called love … because it’s not there. It’s very
hard to define, the word love. It’s … it’s like a bond that two
or more people share.
As the days of my life come and go, I still fail to know what
life itself is, and even though I think and think "beyond time,"
the questions seem as though they don’t have an answer. As a state
of mind, I sometimes wonder how I can change my ways. But, although
I know it’s possible, I still believe it’s not.
Sometimes I wonder if my life is complete. I think that I have
everything I need, like romance, love, and a peace of mind … but
it’s only as a dream. In reality, I have no girl, no romance, and
no peace of mind.
The week after that, he kept writing, and he kept exploring, and
this is another piece he said he wrote from the innermost core of
his heart:
SOMETIMES …
Sometimes I feel my life is like a roller-coaster. One minute
I’m at the top of the world and the next, it all comes crashing
down on me like a ton of bricks, and some way I seem to get my life
up again, then it comes down again. Just like I said, it’s like a
roller-coaster, it goes up and it comes down.
Sometimes I think life is too much work to work for. Still, I
try to stay ahead and work for what truly is mine, but that’s the
disadvantage to a strong-hearted, hopeless romantic. With all this
love and care and there’s no one for me to give it to.
Sometimes I feel like a punching bag, getting hit with all the
puncher has. But still I think it will stop if I show him or her
some, not all of the love I have deep inside me. No matter how much
I give, it never stops. That’s why I’m so cold inside, just waiting
to be loved.
Sometimes, well, in this case all the time, I want to feel …
feel like a bird flying, soaring high in the sky with the greatest
of ease. I just want to be somewhat free. Just free.
Sometimes, I feel like my life is like a dungeon chamber with a
killer beast chained next to me, just waiting for me to make a
wrong move so he can eat me the fuck up. But still, I try to make
friends with him, but one day I feel he will eat.
This is a story about a person. A person named Curley James. A
person that society has decided not to deal with and instead toss
behind the grids of 15-foot fences. This is a person who clearly
has a heart, a mind and a deep need for love.
But most importantly, this is a person whose story we must hear,
whose love we must feel and whose pain we must share. We are all
responsible, because none of us chose in which crib we were to be
placed at the moment of birth.
Browning is a senior majoring in communications.