we all seem to carry at least one little belief from childhood into adulthood…something we accepted without question and kept believing until someone finally corrected us.
well, i have no shame in admitting that for years i carried the dark belief that every man, at some point in his life, went to jail at least once. i did not learn otherwise until my early twenties. it sounds absurd now, but it was one of those assumptions i had absorbed so early and so completely—by simply observing my environment—that it never occurred to me to question it. i was a willing victim of the fallacy of inductive reasoning.
i believed this because, at a young age, i saw people around me go to jail. my father and my brother both did so for political dissent, and my aunt’s husband (i’m going to call him alessandro, though he was no italian) for other, less dignified reasons. the man is dead now, and i have around twelve aunts, half of whose spouses are also dead, so it would be difficult for anyone who half-knows me to identify my dear late alessandro. he was, i should add, a generous man with a love for life (and expensive things he could not afford).
anyway, i carried this thought with me for a long time, until i made it to america (and that story, of making it here, will be posted later on this site), and began to realize: oh, maybe i actually won’t have to go to jail after all, as i appreciated the simplicity and effortlessness of this country. i do not remember the precise moment when that revelation arrived, but i remember that before then, i used to think seriously about what the best way to go to jail would be, and for how long (it is why i loved the shawshank redemption and i still watch it again and again, as i had an andy dufresne-inspired escape plan).
this arguably funny thought had lodged itself so deeply in my mind that i treated it almost like an eventual rite of passage, not as a possibility but as something inevitable. please spare no sympathy points with me here as it didn’t really stress me out as a kid; what stressed me out as a kid was mostly the fights with the lebanese cab drivers who would refuse to put down their cigarettes.
i mention this because being an academic in engineering can sometimes feel stifling to the softer part of my brain. i also used to think that academia naturally brought enlightenment and openness, and not only for those in the liberal arts, humanities, or social sciences. my earliest encounters with the first few professors who taught and advised me in graduate school at purdue seemed to confirm that belief. those now-retired professors, who gave me so much of their time and showed a genuine interest in knowing me as a person, now feel almost entirely extinct from the academic discourse. it’s as though we replaced thought leaders with their llm-equivalent. the transformation is now complete, and it all feels too dull to pick a fight with or bother. when i look around, i sadly see that most people are not very interested in anything beyond writing a research proposal or co-authoring a paper. that reality has made me more isolated, but also sad and dejected. over time, i lost the appetite to reach out, to linger in conversation, or to engage with any expectation of being met with real curiosity. the days of the quirky old professors are sadly long gone.
all this time, i have realized that the worst jail a man can be sent to is the one he inhabits every day: the quiet prison in which you become afraid to say what is truly on your mind, because your mind has grown too accustomed to distasteful compromises. that kind of confinement does not announce itself with bars or guards. it arrives more subtly, through habit, caution, self-censorship, and the slow erosion of candor and honest-to-god interest. and perhaps that is why it is so much more dangerous: because you can live inside it for years and still call yourself free.
i have certainly had—and still have—my own metaphorical jails that seem inescapable, but i do hope that when i find my respite and escape (before i get caught), i find a certain red waiting for me in the zihuatanejo of my free dreams.