I learned something very important when I first began teaching high school: I was not there to teach a curriculum; rather, I was there to teach students – the curriculum was often the excuse. To those particular students, many of whom had been delt a crappy hand in life, I was to teach them that they had choices. Maybe these were not the choices they wanted, but they always had choices.
But then I went to prison.
And then I saw people leave prison and try to navigate the world we all live in every day. A world with many, many choices.
I never really considered how many choices we really have until I saw the contrast, and then I also understood why returning citizens struggle to reintegrate back into society. In prison, you have very few choices; so when a person is released, the ability to make choices is often painful and often slow. The longer the time spent, the more exacerbated the problem becomes.
To be clear, I am not talking about the choice of a career or friends or where to live. I am taking about problem-solving while on the job; priority-setting, time management and the like. The sudden need to make so many decisions leaves a person exhausted.
This is why transitional employment, housing and environments is so important – people need time to adjust to all the decisions which are now required. People need time to process the impact of decisions, but this also hard when everything is urgent in order to successfully establish themselves in society once again.
In the end, a community of empathetic and sympathetic people are required to give the permission for grace, permission to be tired, permission to feel overwhelmed. It gets easier with time – a lesson for all of us.