Electronic Ankle Bracelets, and the Shackles of Modern Life

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time — JOSEPH CAMPBELL

About a year ago, I gave a talk on overcoming fear to a small group of adults at a self-defense school in NYC. I spoke about the origins of fear, and how it has taken me a lifetime to overcome my own — and see it for the illusion that it is.

There was a student in his thirties at the talk who had taken one or two of my martial arts classes. A tough guy, he was super sweet, like so many tough guys are. He was also wearing an electronic ankle bracelet because of a recent felony conviction.

He told me about the bracelet in an awkward moment, after asking about doing private training with me. I told him it was totally cool, and we’d work around his accessory. He said he wanted to train himself to never be in this situation again. He wanted power, and the ability to control it. He wanted to get past the illusion of fear that drove him to act irrationally.

When people hear the word “illusion,’ they tend to think “woo woo,” but isn’t everything is an…