Why I’m not bitter

Whenever people hear about my past, about the years I spent on death row for a crime I didn’t commit, one question rises to the surface almost every time: “How are you not angry and bitter?” Sometimes it’s phrased differently—“How did you let go of the rage?” or “How do you keep from drowning in resentment?” But the heart of the question is always the same. People look at what I went through and they expect me to be consumed by rage. They assume that injustice leaves behind an acid that eats you alive from the inside out.

And to be honest, it can. I saw that acid consume a lot of men on the row. I saw it turn them hard and brittle, until every interaction was laced with venom. I saw it gnaw them into shells of themselves, locked into a mental cell even inside the physical bars closed that around them.

But for me, the answer has always been simple, even if it isn’t easy. The reason I’m not bitter is because I don’t spend my life in the past or the future.

The past is a weight you’ll never stop carrying if you insist on shouldering it every day. It will bow your spine until you can’t stand upright anymore. And the future is a mirage—always just out of reach, shimmering with promises it never quite keeps. If you try to live in either place, you will break.

So I do my best to live here. Now.

That doesn’t mean denial. I don’t repress what happened to me, or pretend it never existed. The scars are real, and they always will be. But I don’t stew in resentment. I don’t sit and stir the pot of “what they did to me,” letting it bubble until it boils over. I also don’t waste my days fantasizing about some distant moment when my name might be officially cleared. I’ve learned that clinging to “someday” is just as poisonous as clinging to “back then.” Both will drive you mad.

— A Monastic Life —

Instead, I try to build a life worth inhabiting. A life I can pour myself into wholeheartedly.

For me, that life is simple. Monastic, in a way. I don’t go out much. I don’t fill my days with social activity. There are stretches of time—sometimes weeks—where the only person I really speak to is my wife, Lorri. To some, that might sound lonely. To me, it feels like clarity. It means fewer distractions. It means I can give myself fully to what matters.

My mornings begin the same way. I wake, make coffee, and sit by the window. From that seat I can watch the light fall across the world outside, shifting shadows and colors as the sun climbs. This isn’t about entertainment. It’s about gratitude. Gratitude not as a concept or a platitude, but as something tangible. I feel it in my body, in my chest, in the slowing of my breath. I feel grateful simply to see beauty at all, after so many years of staring at concrete walls.

Then I rise and begin my practice.

— Tang Soo Do —

Tang Soo Do is not just a martial art to me. It is self-development in the purest sense. Yes, it strengthens the body. Yes, it teaches technique. But those things are only the outer layer. Inside, it is a crucible that works on the mind, the emotions, and the spirit.

Every kick and strike is a kind of prayer in motion. Every form is a ritual. When I practice, I am not just moving through steps—I am shaping myself, piece by piece, through repetition, focus, and presence. Tang Soo Do teaches humility in the face of endless refinement. It teaches perseverance when the body grows tired and the mind whispers excuses. It teaches respect for lineage, for discipline, for the unseen chain of practitioners stretching back centuries who carried the art forward.

And it teaches presence. When you are practicing forms, you cannot live in the past or the future. If your attention drifts, your body stumbles. If your mind wanders, your technique crumbles. The art itself demands that you return to the now, over and over, until presence becomes second nature.

— The Way of the Sword —

After Tang Soo Do, I eat breakfast. Then I pick up the sword. For at least half an hour every day, I practice forms with the blade.

The sword, to me, is not a weapon. It is a mirror. It reflects back my own state of being. If I’m distracted, If I’m tense, If I’m careless, the edge reminds me. The sword punishes ego and rewards presence.

There is a tradition in Japanese swordsmanship of seeing the blade as a spiritual tool, a way to cut through delusion as much as through an enemy. I feel that truth every time I train. The sword has no tolerance for half-heartedness. Either you are there, fully, or you are not. And in that way it becomes another form of meditation, another ritual that drags me into the moment whether I like it or not.

— Kaizen and Alchemy —

The way I live might seem repetitive, even rigid. But within that repetition lies the secret of transformation. It is the principle of kaizen—continuous, incremental improvement. Small acts, repeated daily, create profound change over time.

This is the heart of alchemy too. Alchemy isn’t about turning lead into gold in a laboratory. It’s about refining the self. Breaking yourself down, burning away what is unnecessary, purifying what remains, and then recombining it into something stronger. Tang Soo Do, sword practice, meditation—these are my furnaces, my crucibles, my alembics.

Through them, I am constantly dissolving and coagulating—solve et coagula. Dissolving the bitterness, the rage, the grief. Recombining discipline, presence, and strength. Every day is another turn of the wheel.

— Why I’m Not Bitter —

And so, when people ask me why I am not bitter, the answer is simple: because I am too busy living.

Bitterness belongs to the past. Anxiety belongs to the future. My life belongs to now.

Every day, I choose to pour myself into practices that demand my presence. I don’t have to fight off the past or the future when I am fully immersed in the present. The resentment dissolves on its own. The fear loses its grip.

The truth is, I didn’t “let go” of rage in some heroic act of forgiveness. I simply stopped feeding it. I found something I love—practices that refine and strengthen me—and I gave them everything I have. And in that wholehearted giving, bitterness starved.

This is the key I would hand to anyone who struggles with their own pain, their own anger: find something you love that also makes you more. Something that strengthens you, disciplines you, refines you. Then give yourself to it without holding back. If you do that, you won’t need to “let go” of the past. You’ll be too alive in the present for it to matter.

And maybe that’s what freedom really is. Not waiting for the world to make things right, but building a life so full, so wholehearted, that bitterness can’t breathe inside it.