Tools & Tips
Changing the world with personal acountability

From Terry Tempest Williams, author of Mosiac: Finding Beauty in a Broken World:

I am writing from the county jail in Soda Springs, Idaho, where I'm doing time for speeding without a valid driver's license: 48 mph in a 35 mph zone. My initial response to Eve was, "We can change the world through meaningful conversation." But now, with my back against the cinder block wall in a pod with 12 other women, most here because of addiction to crystal meth, I've changed my mind.

My bail was $200, which I could have paid, but a voice inside me said, Perhaps this is where you belong. You might learn something. And so, after a call to my husband, who thought I was joking, I was fingerprinted and photographed, replacing my black outfit and Prada slippers with an orange jumsuit and matching Keds. When I entered the pod, one of the women said, "I'm here because of speed, what are you in here for?" I looked at her. "Speed of a different nature..."

I thought I was above the law. I thought I was someone special. But walking in a circle with other women for our exercise break, all in the same orange garb, I realized how small mistakes and oversights do escalate into bigger ones. I think we will change the world by accepting personal responsibility for our actions. All of them. To be accountable for what we do and do not do, and then have the courage to face the consequences, will create an outward spiral of honesty necessary for a more conscious and authentic life.