Which seems like it would be a happier existence: living freely in a Manhattan penthouse as a billionaire among family and friends or being arrested for fraud, stripped of your estate, and condemned to living and dying in prison?
I'm sure you can spot a counterintuitive answer on its way and indeed the answer is the latter. Where do these two options come from?
I was reading Bernie Madoff's interview with Barbara Walters and struck by this:
He says that while he was in jail, during the four months before he was sent to prison, he did think about suicide, but he didn't have the courage," said Walters, who interviewed Madoff about two weeks ago. "But now he says, in prison, he never thinks about it. He's happier in prison."
and his justification?
"I feel safer here than outside. I have people to talk to, no decisions to make. I know I will die in prison. I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear. Now I have no fear because I'm no longer in control."
Even though he had more material wealth and freedom in his old life, the constant struggle to maintain pretenses and the paranoia necessary to keep his lifestyle ate through him.
I'm also reminded of Pema Chodron's comments on the "wisdom of no escape", the peace that comes from accepting that there's no way out of your situation, a conceit that is echoed in research that has been done in cognitive psychology (TED talk). Sometimes we have to drag ourselves kicking and screaming into the cold water before we can realize that the clean refreshment was exactly what we needed.
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