Three years ago, I was privileged to have founded a rehabilitative record label called InHouse Records, co-created with ten prisoners from within Her Majesty’s Prison Service in the UK. 

 

Today, that initiative has impacted thousands of men, exponentially increasing positive behaviour and making an incredible contribution to the reduction of the reoffending rate. As we explored the topology of the problem space by hearing from all who occupy it, we began to see a familiar pattern. Many had been thinking separately. They found themselves part of a system built on the promise of delivering certainty but struggling to provide any. What if the antidote to uncertainty isn’t always certainty? 

 

The community in Chennai had almost no mental health issues because they relied on one another and supported each other; their network of relationships created harmony. My time in Chennai left a deep impression on my practice. Indeed, throughout the last fifteen years working in the homelessness sector and in the criminal justice system, I still pursue the kind of harmony I witnessed in that slum community. 

 

Harmony is the combination of separate, but mutually dependent parts, formed in a manner that uses their similarities and differences to bring unity through complexity. 

 

How do we create harmony? At InHouse we focused on what’s strong, not what’s wrong. Believing we are connected helped us to act connected. We stopped seeing officers, prisoners, and uniforms and began seeing people. Just people, all keen to change their circumstances. 

 

Harmony is not a dream needing to be fulfilled, it is a reality that needs to be recalled. 

 

The ghost of Jacob Marley in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, cautioned Scrooge that, “Mankind should be his business.” Visited by three phantoms during the night, Scrooge realised who he needed to be, who he had always been. Who we have always been. Interdependent. Connected to one another, responsible for each other, and compassionate to each other. 

 

Dickens’ genius was to illustrate that kindness, forbearance, and charity didn’t need to be acquired by Scrooge because they were already there. Like the single root of the Pando that is already there underneath the surface, Dickens urges us to lose our ‘separate thinking’ and in doing so, uncover our buried interdependence. Life…will find a way. 

 

We desperately need to find better ways of being human, in light of those dark events in Minneapolis recently. If as a society we can work interdependently to lockdown something as small and invisible as a microbe, then surely we can work interdependently to lockdown something as ugly and visible as racism.

 

Everything is in flux, yes, but with a deepening interdependence the flux can sound more like harmony and less like uncertainty. 

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At InHouse, we focus on creating safe & enabling environments to foster interdependence. Our success is in-spite of operating in a challenging and changing environment like prison. In fact, we turned a prison into a safe space: not by altering the bricks and mortar, but by understanding and not judging the people. Ultimately, InHouse is about developing the skills to do relationships better, and subsequently build those relationships into healthy networks, ones that spiral elegantly skywards toward mobility and equality. 

 

Healthy relationships naturally draw us to greater interdependence, and away from separate thinking. Healthy relationships grow into healthier networks and foster harmony. I am sharing three simple actions, learnt from our work with InHouse, that we can all do right now in order to cultivate better relationships, build healthier networks, and remind ourselves of our interdependence through harmony.

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Be Accountable to one another.

What are the mediums that can freeze frame our lives and allow us to see a refracted version of ourselves? Slowing down enables us to identify the areas of our lives that need upgrading and the relationship skills that require nurturing. 

 

By taking responsibility for our actions, behaviour, and thoughts we are becoming aware of our connection to each other. Greater accountability doesn’t just apply to our lives, but extends to the interdependence required for healthy civic life too. 

 

Through researching InHouse we know the significance of mayors and district attorneys, who have huge power in shaping our criminal justice system at local and state levels. These roles are elected positions. 

 

Greater accountability means realising our civic responsibility to punch though stifling ID Laws & voter suppression tactics that make democracy difficult for all to engage with. Using our civic muscles, where atrophy has developed, to demand accountability by exercising our vote at local and state elections where historically the turnout has been low, especially amongst the youth. 

 

Our interdependence must span deeper and wider than merely allowing the myriad of refracted colours to shape harmony within our lives. It must extend to an accountability that reminds us we have a duty to all. Freedom cannot be freedom if inequality exists. We can start by making our personal lives more accountable, and then bring those to account who assume great responsibility. 

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Communicate clearly to all.

The harmony created by greater interdependence develops better relationships, which in turn forms healthier networks. Healthy networks break inequality. Developing better communication skills makes us more likely to understand and less likely to judge. We have learnt through InHouse that communicating with honesty and integrity, however difficult, produces compassion.

 

Dickens reminds us that our interdependence may be buried beneath our separate thinking and by uncovering it we can communicate clearly in our relationships and through our networks. We can rediscover our civic literacy and experience protection from discrimination on grounds such as race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, colour, age, political affiliation, ethnicity, religion, and disability.

 

We are interdependent, and if we choose to act and start communicating to one another interdependently right now, then even amidst the constant flux, our lives can begin to provide the harmony that will sustain us, doing more than merely surviving, but actually thriving. 

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Adapt together.

Living in an environment that constantly changes, requires us to be constantly learning. 

It’s often said that failure can be the greatest teacher, although how ironic that failure is a word that brings such shame amongst us and rarely conjures up images of our favourite teacher. Failure is something society has always managed social distancing from, far more than two metres. 

 

As children we have been warned to avoid failure, so when it does visit us, as it always does, our reaction is to hide it under the carpet. As we become older, we are less inclined to accept it (see accountability) and may even explore blaming someone else! If we can’t learn from our mistakes we will not only keep making them, but also create more chaos in the process. 

 

Far from being avoided, we must do all we can in order for failure to become our friend. The more we are able to adapt from our mistakes the more our interdependence becomes stronger. 

 

The greater the uncertainty, the greater the potential for interdependence and subsequently the greater the harmony. Big changes can create stronger connections amongst us, deeper relationships that lead to antifragile networks and complex harmonies. We can start right now by being brave and exploring our own failure, not critically or with judgement, but lovingly and with compassion, encouraging ourselves to adapt and in doing so, adapt together.