What happens to us in life may not be our fault, but how we think about it is our responsibility
It’s 5:14am in Dubai when I hear it most clearly. The city is still. I walk into the kitchen, empty but filled with the smell of freshly ground coffee. The fridge hums. This past week, the rhythm of my mornings has been shaped by notes exchanged across opposite time zones with a man living in an impossible situation.
The tone is always steady. No drama. No self-pity. Just facts: the small space, the routine of prison, the laps run in a yard bordered by a wall on one side and chain-link on the other. What is sought is simple - tools for the mind, ways to stop the space from shrinking and a connection with the outside world.
I offer breathing exercises. Five minutes. Eyes soft. Counting inhales. Stretching exhales. Then body scanning. I send across a book - Letting Go by David Hawkins. The good book. My bible. The most important book I’ve ever read. More than a levelling tool, it’s the foundation of how I coach. The core idea - that surrender is power, not weakness - sits behind almost every conversation I have with a client, and it feels never more relevant than in this situation.
This connection comes from my work with the Last Prisoner Project. Founded in 2019, In Denver Colorado. It is a nonpartisan organisation dedicated to ending the injustice of cannabis criminalisation in America. They take on cases one by one: clearing records, securing releases, and supporting people as they re-enter life. Their position is simple - if you can legally profit from cannabis, no one should remain behind bars for it.
Through them I offer counsel and presence to inmates - men in need of someone to talk to and exchange with. Small increments of time, through pre-arranged Zoom calls, hand written notes and emails, become a connection to the outside world. Even these briefest of communications carry weight: reminders that they are not forgotten, that their lives are still important, that people care and are fighting their corner.
The sentences are brutal. The crimes are not - often only possession. The world outside has changed beyond recognition for those incarcerated, yet their days repeat within narrow strips of concrete and wire. And still, even there, presence can be found.
This week I was sent a note by one of my men, that touched me deeply. It described a run in a prison yard somewhere deep in Mississippi. After our work on holding space, on learning to sit and meditate in small increments of time, this man described in beautiful detail how his soundscape suddenly came alive: the wind combing through a fringe of grass, two birds — one with a high, urgent call, the other slow and low. Feet finding rhythm. A guard’s radio crackling, then fading behind the birds. The yard seemed wider, not because the fences moved, but because attention did. It was a moment of beauty, caught inside a cage. To me a deeply poetic reminder of how much we overlook in our free lives.
This morning, my own practice felt different. The same kitchen. The same smell of coffee. I closed my eyes and noticed the faint whistle of the air-conditioning, the sharp scent of coffee, the distant tyres on tarmac. Ordinary sounds, alive when you catch them. But today, they carried more weight. More gratitude.
Progress lives in these small, stubborn acts of noticing. In a yard between concrete and wire. In the half-light of a quiet Dubai morning. And in the choice we all have — to pay attention, to see the beauty, and never take our freedom for granted.
Outside the window, a myna calls. I really listen, pour the coffee, press record, and talk.
Big Love
Chris
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Viktor Frankl. Neurologist and Holocaust Survivor.
