Make Time Serve You — Your Life as an Artist
I do a lot of reading, mainly because I like to process information for myself, rather than someone else feeding it to me. And one of the best places to find good books is the thrift store.
Go into your local thrift store and you can find all types of things from the past–vintage clothes, pottery, art, cameras. As I searched around one day, I wandered over to the book section and pulled out a paperback called Birdman of Alcatraz by Thomas E. Gaddis. It was a simple, short book. I always love Clint Eastwood movies, and this sounded similar to the classic “Escape from Alcatraz,” so I bought it for one dollar and carried on the rest of the day.
What I didn’t realize was that this particular story would change my life forever.
The Story of Robert F. Stroud
Now, I’m not going to tell you the entire story of the Birdman, but here’s a quick breakdown of what’s going on:
In 1909, 18-year-old Robert F. Stroud pleaded guilty to manslaughter after murdering a man who raped his girlfriend.
During his time in prison, he stabbed another inmate over an altercation, was transferred to Leavenworth prison in Kansas (1912) and stabbed and killed another guard out of self-defense. He was sentenced to death by hanging (1916), but after a fortuitous meeting between Stroud’s mother and the First Lady at the time, Edith Wilson, (wife to President Woodrow Wilson–1920), Stroud was given a presidential pardon and had his sentence commuted to life in prison.
Out of his 54 years of incarceration, 42 of them were spent in solitary confinement. And not because he was inherently bad, but a series of unfortunate circumstances kept him locked away in a tiny cell with so much time on his hands. You would think that after being given a raw deal in life, one would give up or make excuses as to why the world is against them–Stroud never subscribed to that belief.
The Most Important Thing You May Ever Read
At the very end of the book, Stroud writes a letter to a young boy who tried to start a petition to get him released from prison.
Unfortunately, the kid’s efforts were denied, but within the reply that Stroud sends, the secret to life is awfully close to being revealed. For me, these last pages are, perhaps, the most important thing I”ve ever read. Here, you have a man whose life was stripped away–who could easily blame so many others for his misfortune. A man with no formal education, with no hope for the future, losing precious time locked away in a dark, tiny cell. What lessons could someone like him possibly have to teach?
Even if you never read the entire book, I urge you to read this final letter and take each word to heart.
Stroud’s Final Correspondence
There is just one thing about your note that I do not like. You say that you know that you will never reach the heights in your studies that I have reached in mine. Now I do not like to see a young person sell himself short. Modesty may be all right on occasion, but in my opinion it is often a virtue of dubious value. Always tell yourself that you are as good as anyone that breathes; that you have two hands and a brain, and a little time in which to use them. But they are enough, and no one has any more. And if you train and force them to serve you well, you can reach any height to which you aspire. But to waste any of them is to betray yourself. I hope that you never make some of the terrible mistakes I have made or see some of the phases of life I have seen, but if you could, for one moment, see some of the men who are ten, fifteen and even twenty years my junior, you would understand what I mean and why it is that I always think of this place as the final port of wasted lives. And, Dennis, if there is any greatness or virtue in my life, it is not my work with birds. It is the fact that I have never joined that group. I have demonstrated time and again that no man is or even can be defeated until he, himself, quits fighting … I have spent a lot of time locked up, but . . . I have never served time…because I have made that time serve me, and I have never been able to find enough of it to do all the things that I wanted to do. There will be times, however, when the whole bottom will seem to have fallen out of your life, and when those times come, just say to yourself, “well, here goes nothing,” fix a smile upon your lips that will not come off even if the whole world totters, clench your teeth and keep right on going…you will be able to reach heights of accomplishments that I could not even dream of, and you will learn that the happiness, for which everyone is searching, is something to be found only within yourself. Not in your surroundings. And always remember that these suggestions come to you from a man who has seen the worse life has to offer and has made the best of it, who has ten times in his life had doctors tell him that he could not survive, and three times has heard a judge fix the day and hour of his death. Yet, who has outlived all of them and who knows by experience that the only thing that can ever defeat you is yourself.
Use the Time You Have
With that, what dreams or passions do you have in life? Or what do you want to explore for yourself?
I always wanted to take pictures, but felt like I wasn’t creative enough or was afraid that being a photographer would take away from my other interests of acting or writing–I couldn’t have been more wrong. The truth is that you have the ability to expand who you are no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. But somewhere along the way, you have to be open to the life around you. Keep your eyes wide and your heart exposed, and give yourself the freedom within to at least try something you want to do.
I’ve experienced first-hand how fleeting time can be, but instead of feeling sorry for what’s gone, I try my hardest to cherish what I have left. To be patient and to slow things down enough for me to take out my camera and capture it–to preserve it forever.
Whether you’re a photographer, a painter, a dancer, a poet, a musician, or an employee sitting at the office, I hope Stroud’s words inspire you to use the time you have, and he’s right…despite having all the time in the world, it’s never enough once we discover something we love.
