Many thinkers have suggested that as long as you have an open mind, you can never truly be imprisoned.
Many years ago listening to radio 4 I heard a series of programmes about the Malay peninsula in World War 2 and how the British interned suffered under the Japanese. I recall distinctly the story of Cunningham-Brown because he went to my school, though many years earlier. In the prison camp he found his old house-master’s son when they both made a grab for the same tin cup on a heap they were rummaging through, and they were close in their accommodation.
In India he had learned some of the techniques of Guru’s and set about creating for himself in the corner of his room, a rose bush. He said how he built it up piece by piece, leaf by leaf until after a few months if he looked away and back quickly the rose would be there. One morning when going to wash his house-master’s son whispered to him as they washed their hands, ‘Do you have any soap?’
Surprised at the question Cunningham-Brown asked him where he thought he could have got any soap from to which the house-master’s son replied,
‘Well where’s this smell of roses coming from?’