Sliding Doors

He walked out of the prison at 7am, couldn't see his brother's car, crossed the road to the café. His brother was already there. So was his daughter.

She was sixteen now. He hadn't seen her in six months. The plan had been for his brother to pick him up, drive to the house, surprise her with a fake package delivery at 8am. But his brother and daughter had other ideas. They'd left early, driven to the café across from the prison gates, and waited for him there.

That's the image I can't get out of my head from last Tuesday's visit to a category D prison with Bath Samaritans: a man walking into a café at seven in the morning expecting to coordinate logistics, and instead finding his daughter sitting there waiting for him after half a year of enforced separation because something went wrong with a choice that seemed harmless at the time.

I'd gone to learn how to handle calls from prisoners. I came away with something else entirely.

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Six men sat with us for two hours, all of them trained listeners within the prison system, all of them there to help a room full of Samaritan volunteers understand what life inside actually looks like so we could be better at our jobs when prisoners ring the helpline. Category D, open prison, the easiest end of the spectrum - these were men who'd been hand-selected because they were thoughtful and empathetic and willing to share experiences that must have been difficult to revisit.

What struck me first was their willingness to talk, how generous they were with details. They walked us through what the first day feels like, the transitions between different category prisons, what happens when funding gets tight and staff numbers drop and the whole system contracts around you. They talked about day release towards the end of sentences, the chance to reintegrate gradually, to get work and earn money so you're not walking out with nothing but a backpack and whatever chaos the world decides to throw at someone with a criminal record and no safety net.

And they were grateful. That's what got me. These men felt fortunate to be where they were, appreciative of the officers and the environment and the relative freedom they had compared to other categories. Plenty of people never get near a category D prison, and they knew it.

But underneath that gratitude was something else. One of them talked about isolation - not physical isolation, though there's plenty of that, but emotional isolation. Even in an open prison, even when you've built genuine bonds, there's always this background anxiety that anyone you get close to can be moved to another prison without warning. No notice, no goodbye, no way to stay in touch. So you keep distance between yourself and everyone, because attachment is a liability when people can vanish overnight.

Another one used the phrase "constant state of bereavement."

Everyone nodded.

It wasn't just about missing people on the outside, though that's real enough. It was about losing connection with anyone who matters inside, repeatedly, with no control over it. One of them had been diagnosed with cancer and talked about how the others had supported him through it, this tight bond between the six of them and the wider Samaritan setup within the prison. Real respect, real care. And still, underneath it, this persistent sense of being alone.

Someone afterwards made the comparison to the military - same band of brothers intensity, same experience that no one outside can fully understand, same reliance on the people going through it alongside you. But when you leave the military, society supports you. It's not taboo to have served. You're allowed to talk to the people who were there with you, to maintain those bonds, to process what you went through together. When you leave prison, you're forbidden from contacting other ex-cons. The only people who actually understand what you experienced are the ones you're legally prohibited from speaking to.

I asked them how someone like me, new to this and struggling to connect with prisoner calls, should approach these conversations. The answer was straightforward: don't assume you know anything, don't suggest you understand what it's like, and recognise that if someone's calling you, it's because they either can't or won't talk to anyone else. But even then, they're probably paranoid about how much you know, because that's the environment they operate in. Trust is scarce and surveillance is constant.

What I was hearing, though I didn't fully recognise it yet, was a precise description of what happens when crisis becomes chronic. Not the acute panic of the first few weeks when everything's on fire, but the grinding long-term psychological cost of living with isolation that you can't talk about, bereavement that keeps repeating, paranoia about trust because vulnerability has consequences, and chronic uncertainty about when or whether things will ever get better. All of it happening simultaneously, none of it resolving, no respite from any of it.

It's a cacophony of emotion that tears you to bits.

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After the Q&A we mingled over M&S quiche and sandwiches. Under the impending deadline of the prisoners needing to return to their cells, and the shared need for meaning and compassion and understanding, the conversations crash-dived to leagues below where most conversation rarely finds itself.

The man who'd arranged the café surprise was a single parent. Thirteen-year-old daughter when something went wrong - a favour that turned out badly, a choice that seemed harmless at the time, the details don't really matter. What matters is that he was arrested one morning after dropping his daughter at school. He'd told her he'd pick her up that afternoon.

He was held in custody for three days before he could make contact. Three days of being sick with worry that she was standing outside school waiting for him, that she had no idea where he was or whether he was coming back. His parents and brother eventually stepped in. He was held on remand in a category B prison for two and a half years.

Two and a half years later, he was moved to the category D prison. Six months after that, he qualified for day release. That's when he arranged the café surprise.

When he told me this story, I recognised something I'd been slow to name: I've been working with businesses in crisis for twelve years, and the cacophony he'd just described - isolation, bereavement, paranoia, chronic uncertainty, all of it happening at once with no resolution - is exactly what I see in every crisis-struck business leader I work with.

The isolation that comes from not being able to talk honestly about what's happening because the shame and stigma are too great. The repeated loss of relationships with people who would understand, because admitting you need help feels like admitting failure and so you cut yourself off from the only community that might actually help. The paranoia about trust because you're terrified of what people will think, what they'll do with the information, whether vulnerability will make everything worse. The chronic uncertainty about whether things will ever get better, whether you'll make it through, when the next bad news is coming.

It's the same cacophony. Different circumstances, identical emotional experience.

Most business leaders I work with don't fail because they lack technical capability or resources or intelligence. They fail because they can't function under that cacophony. The cash flow models and restructuring plans and operational fixes are almost never the problem. What determines whether someone makes it through is whether they can handle the emotional paralysis that comes with everything falling apart, whether they can maintain relationships and perspective and purpose when that storm is raging constantly in the background.

These six men sitting with us over quiche and sandwiches had developed capabilities that most business leaders never learn until they're forced to: the ability to maintain gratitude when circumstances are objectively terrible, to build genuine connection even when it's risky, to keep functioning with purpose when most external validation has been stripped away, to hold perspective when everything's telling you to spiral.

Not because they're naturally resilient or innately tough. Because they had no choice but to develop those capabilities or be destroyed by the cacophony.

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Before the prisoners left, I asked one of them whether he felt he'd be a better man after his sentence or whether the scars would dominate.

He said he knew he had to use the experience as an opportunity to grow, to be thankful for what he had, to prepare himself to apply the skills he'd learned in the next chapter of his life.

That's what I'm taking from this. Not techniques for handling difficult calls or vocabulary lists or referral pathways. The recognition that crisis - whether it's prison or business failure or any other version of that cacophony - should be seen as a gift if you can survive it. An opportunity to understand yourself, to develop capabilities you didn't know you needed, to use it as a springboard to thrive in whatever comes next.

The deep recognition and irrefutable realisation I had sitting with these men is that there's no meaningful difference between them and me beyond a handful of sliding door moments. I could have been in that position. They could have been in mine. All the middle-class safety I've wrapped around myself - the businesses I've built, the credentials I've accumulated, the life I've constructed in Bath with my wife and two boys - feels less like something I earned through virtue and more like dumb luck that my moments of poor judgement or casual favour-doing didn't intersect with the wrong circumstances at the wrong time.

But what's not arbitrary is what these men have learned about surviving crisis. Those capabilities - emotional regulation, perspective-taking, maintaining relationships under stress, functioning with purpose when circumstances are bleak - are teachable. Most people never develop them until they're forced to. The ones who do, who learn to see crisis as the gift that forces growth rather than the catastrophe that defines failure, are the ones who don't just survive but come out stronger.

I don't need a cheat sheet to connect with a father who spent three days sick with worry about his daughter standing outside school. I just need to remember that the distance between crisis and stability is smaller than most people think, that the cacophony tears everyone to bits in the same way regardless of what form the crisis takes, and that the people who've been through it and chosen to grow from it have wisdom worth listening to.

The man in the café at 7am with his daughter waiting for him - he'd survived the cacophony. He'd chosen growth over scars. And now he was getting ready for his next chapter.

That's what thriving through crisis looks like.