Recently Casey and I were able to visit our friend who is serving a prison sentence for armed robbery. He was sentenced in 2004 and is not eligible for release until 2025. We had an interesting talk with our friend. What we found was that his experience is very similar to what we have been going through, adapting and transitioning back to American culture. In prison, he has had to adapt to a new way of life. He has had to figure out how to navigate the system and "stay alive". I would argue that he faced many more challenging things than we did living overseas, but we also had to learn how to navigate life in a foreign country. He spends a lot of time thinking about getting out and also asking questions about how things have changed "outside". He has little understanding of how things are now on the outside, and when we came back, we did not either. We both are American. We've both lived here in Indiana, but because of our time away, it has all changed. We've struggled to figure out how to navigate a completely online world of job applications and interviewing, and we've had a hard time figuring out what is required to get a job. We've found that some things do look and feel the same, but our lives are different because we have lived in a different culture with a different set of values and concept of time. So, there have been changes both to the place and county itself and then also to ourselves. The same is true of our friend. He will face changes to this place and country and then will also find that he is not the same person he was when he entered prison. It was interesting to sit and listen to Casey talk to our friend--and watch them realize that they are in very similar shoes. I hope that our experience helps him when he is in the position to enter society again.
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