7/29/2019 The Theft of Dignity
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The Theft of Dignity By Rev. Mark Ehrlichmann
There are times in life when one needs to step back and realize
the fragility of this human life we live.
Those times help us to reflect on the basic values that are
important to us and are to be protected and
respected as the standard of necessity for all human beings.
Below is a poem I wrote to describe what I thought and felt when
I learned of the story of one mans
struggle in life. A three-word phrase struck me as being the key
expression of all of us when we findourselves in unknowing and
uncontrollable situations. The poem is simply called I Dont
Know:
I don't know,
The anguish of not knowingIs such that simply knowing
The "I don't know"
Leaves me with a heartThat simply wants to die
Because no one
Bothers to tell meWhat I need to know
To get beyond
The "I don't know"
And the death it brings,To the life of knowing
Which is freedom.
Attention, Attention,
Do you see me?
I am right here,Please, Im right here!
Why cant you see me,For who I am?A person just like you
With the same need
To breathe, drink, and eat.
I have a heart that feels,A mind that thinks,
I want to know.
It is lonely to simply be
Alone by myself with no respect
Or not being understood.Please, notice me,
And yourself, also.
Imagine you have been unjustly placed in a prison cell that has
become your home for over thirtyyears. You can prove your
innocence, but the judicial process ignores and casually casts your
pleas
aside. You have friends on the outside who struggle valiantly to
give you hope and fight for your
cause.
7/29/2019 The Theft of Dignity
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This is a story of one man, who is deaf, wrongly convicted, and
out of the deepest anguish a soul can
bear, tries to end his life. To end his life because of the
darkness that encloses his soul as a result ofnot knowing; of not
understanding what happened that led him to calling a prison cell
home for the
past 30 plus years.
As the poem states and expresses, the desperation of this one
man is simply to let people know that
information was not fully shared, if at all. No one bothered to
confirm through listening to him, to
learn from him WHAT he understood and knew. Communication was
egregiously conducted toserve only a readers digest purpose to
resolve a horrible crime. A crime that this man did notcommit and
can prove that he was no where near the scene of the crime. But he
was not provided the
information or the tools through which to responsibly and
accurately participate in his defense of the
charges against him.
Helen Keller says Deafness separates people from people. This is
what happened to this man. He
was separated from others because no one took the time to know
what his needs were fully, to allowhim to participate in defending
himself. Assumptions were made based on a perceived
understanding
of certain vocabularies, such as hear accurately. When the word
hear is used in discussions on
hearing loss, there can never be an overstated emphasis on the
distinction between hear and
understand. One can hear a noise but not understand what it is
until it has more information to helpit discern what that noise is.
It is a must that communication needs to be clearly understood
through a
repeating from those involved of the thoughts that are conveyed
in that communication. Clearly, this
was not the case with this one mans experience in the criminal
justice system which strives on clarityof communication in
discerning the facts of a complaint.
This mans struggle has reached an impasse that now leads to its
only recourse and that is a pardonfrom the governor. It is the most
heart-felt plea of this one man to request people to listen to
his
story and understand the travesty that occurred to him. He
desires to teach us all to remember the
preciousness of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and
to learn all we can from our shared dailyexperiences and understand
the needs and desires of our own personal goals. No one deserves
to
experience the theft of their dignity through a miscommunication
and an I dont know.
