Mud or Stars?

Freedom starts in the mind.

I know how simple that can sound, especially to someone sitting behind a wall, a fence, a sentence, or a situation that is not changing anytime soon. But I keep seeing it, not as an idea, but as something lived.

In 2019, I was flying home from Brazil and watched a movie based on a true story. It was about a young man wrongly imprisoned and the older man he met inside who became a mentor to him.

Every time the mentor spoke, it felt like he was pointing the younger man back to the only place freedom could begin. Not outside. Not later. Not after everything was corrected.

In his own mind.

At one point, he tells him that happiness begins and ends in the mind, and that he has to free his mind first. I remember sitting on that plane and feeling those words land. There are some things we hear before we understand why they matter.

At the time, I had no idea how much of my life would soon move toward men in prison. I did not know how many visiting rooms I would sit in, how many letters I would read, or how many phone calls would come from units in Ohio, Texas, Nevada, and other places. But something in that film stayed with me.

The mentor says, in essence, that the young man may have seemed  wronged, but he is there now. And if he is ever going to leave that place, he has to begin leaving it on the inside.

That has never really left me. Before you walk out physically, you have to begin walking out in your mind.

I have thought about that with men who may be going home soon. I have thought about it with men who may never go home. I have thought about it in my own life too, because prison is not the only place a person can stay locked up.

We can stay shut inside an old injury, an old identity, an old resentment, or an old story about what happened and what it means. We can be standing in the open air and still be staring through bars.

In that same movie, the mentor shares an old saying:

Two men looked out through the same prison bars. One saw mud. The other saw stars.

Perspective, he tells them.

Mud or stars?

I could not shake it.

It is such a simple image. Two men in the same place, looking through the same bars, and seeing different worlds. The bars have not moved. The place has not changed. But something in the seeing is different.

Two years later, in 2021, I was at a meditation retreat in Mexico when I met a man whose story had one of those quiet turns life sometimes makes.

He had spent years as a high-level coach, helping people change their lives. Then, through events he never could have planned, he found himself in a prison in London.

While he was there, he wrote a short parable. No name on it. He called it Mud or Stars?

It was simple. A story about choice, but not the shallow kind. Not “just think positive.” Not denying that things can feel difficult.  It was about the quiet place in the mind where we begin to notice what we are looking at, what we are listening to, and what story we are letting lead us.

He was able to print copies inside and hand them to other men. Before long, he could hear it being called from cell to cell.

Mud or stars?

That moved me.

I could picture it. One man reminding another, not with a sermon or a long explanation, but with a question.

What are you looking at right now? Where is your mind living?

When he told me the story, something opened. I asked if I could turn the parable into a small booklet to send into prisons as a simple doorway into deeper conversation. He gave it freely. He even pointed me toward a publisher.

And what started as a conversation became something we could place in a person’s hands.

For a while, I waited to hear whether the booklets had made it inside. Anyone who has done this kind of work knows that getting material into a prison is not always simple. Sometimes it moves slowly. Sometimes it disappears into a process you cannot see. Sometimes you just wait.

Then a message came from one of the men inside.

He wrote:

“The shift is happening.”

That line stayed with me. Not the whole world changing at once. Not every problem solved. Just something shifting. One person reads. Another asks. A conversation starts. A small story moves from hand to hand.

Mud or stars?

The next morning, as I sat down to write about it, a message came in from the man I had met in Mexico. I had not heard from him in months. He mentioned new contacts in this work and then noticed that a note he had meant to send long before had never gone through.

So he sent it right then.

I smiled when I saw it. The timing felt too hard to ignore.

I do not always know what to do with moments like that. I try not to turn every coincidence into a conclusion. But I also try not to miss quiet encouragement when it comes. There are times when life seems to whisper, keep going. Not loudly. Not with proof. Just enough to take the next step.

What began as a movie on a plane became a line I carried. That line met a man in Mexico who had written a parable in a cell. The parable became a booklet. The booklet made its way inside. Then a man wrote back:

“The shift is happening.”

Somewhere in all of it, I was reminded again that change often moves through small things. A sentence that stays. A conversation that opens. A letter that finds its way back. A question that gives someone a little room to choose again.

Mud or stars?

I do not hear that question as pressure. I hear it as an invitation.

Because sometimes all we can see is mud. Sometimes the grief is real. The consequences are real. The unfairness is real. A person may have every reason to be tired. Because sometimes all that seems visible is mud. Grief appears real. Consequences appear real. Unfairness appears real. A person can feel completely exhausted by what seems to be happening.

I do not want to stand outside anyone’s pain and tell them to look up too quickly.

But I have sat with enough men inside to know that something can happen when a person becomes willing, even for a moment, to see a little differently. The room or  the sentence do not change.

But our relationship to it can.

A man can begin to see that he is more than what appears to have happened to him. He can notice that the anger he has been carrying has kept him company, but it has not given him peace. He can remember that the old story does not have to be the only story.

One man can say to another, mud or stars, and something in the room can soften.

That is the part I keep trusting. I keep seeing it.

What starts as one relationship becomes a small circle. Then another letter. Then another man asking for a book. And slowly, something loosens. The old weight of not being good enough gets a little thinner. Something kinder gets a little room to grow.

I do not know where any of it is going. I rarely do. But I know what it feels like when a simple question travels farther than I could have carried it on my own.

Mud or stars?

Maybe that is enough for today. To notice where I am looking. To be honest when all I can see is mud. To be gentle enough not to force the stars.

And to stay open to the possibility that even from behind bars, some part of us can still look up.