Lei Cheng

Once you realize that pain is the ultimate commonality, you can also give kindness as the universal gift.

Some of the most precious gifts I've received were in detention, even though we had close to nothing.

Music.

A cellmate wrote a song in her head in solitary and sang it for me on my birthday.

No Spotify or chat GPT or even notepad from her head to our ears.

Poetry, an acrostic poem, knocked via the adjacent cell's walls through an alphabetical code.

It took over 400 knocks and precise counting to receive that message.

But you know what?

With each knock, I could feel the power of friendship transcend those thick walls.

Of course, we were punished, but it was worth it.

Crafts that we made in secrecy that were destroyed once seen because it was against the rules.

But the objects were nothing compared to how we felt in making and giving those gifts.

So you see, there can be endless creativity even within a world of constraints.

And maybe by having so much, we lose the ability to create something out of nothing.

I'm not promoting detention, but like athletes training at high altitude, setting some constraints may expand our minds.

We can also expand our appreciation of life through some deprivation, because that recalibrates

You're rigged to scale for joy.

One summer night in detention, there was a blackout.

The only darkness we'd experienced in all those years.

The hateful fluorescent lights were off and nobody could see us on the monitors.