They took my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, but what they couldn't take was

Hear the thunderous yet tender words of Anthony Ray Hinton, a man who endured the unendurable and emerged with a light unbroken: “They took my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, but what they couldn't take was my joy. I couldn't do nothing about the years, but I could control my joy... I kept a smile on my face; I kept love in my heart.” These words do not come from comfort, but from the furnace of injustice, from a soul wrongfully imprisoned for nearly three decades on death row. Yet instead of despair, he chose joy; instead of bitterness, he chose love. His teaching is a beacon for all who suffer: that though the world may strip us of years, freedom, and opportunity, it cannot steal the treasures of the spirit unless we surrender them.

The origin of these words lies in one of the darkest injustices of modern America. Anthony Ray Hinton was imprisoned in Alabama for crimes he did not commit. He watched the calendar tear away his youth, his middle age, and the prime of his life. Yet while iron bars caged his body, they could not imprison his soul. He refused to give his captors what they sought most—the breaking of his spirit. Instead, he proclaimed mastery over the one realm left entirely his: the realm of joy, the realm of the heart.

History offers us many who have borne the same lesson. Think of Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in a South African prison under apartheid. The rulers of his land sought to silence him, to bury his cause in chains. Yet when he emerged, it was not with vengeance but with forgiveness and determination to heal his nation. Like Hinton, Mandela knew that years could be taken, but the inner fire could not be extinguished unless one permitted it. The strength to smile in prison, to keep love in the heart, is a heroism greater than any crown.

The meaning of Hinton’s words is thus this: time and circumstance are not fully ours to control, but the spirit is. Life will deal us suffering—sometimes justly, often unjustly. There will be losses we cannot recover, wounds we cannot erase. But the choice of whether to let those losses consume us is always ours. Joy is not naïve denial of pain, but the weapon that keeps pain from consuming the soul. Love is not weakness in the face of hatred, but the strength that prevents hatred from spreading within us.

The lesson stretches further still. For how many among us, though free, live imprisoned by bitterness, chained by anger, defeated by disappointments? Hinton reminds us that freedom is not merely the absence of bars, but the presence of inner peace. To keep a smile in the darkest cell is to declare victory over despair. To keep love in the heart when surrounded by cruelty is to refuse to be remade in the image of one’s oppressors.

The lesson for us is clear: guard your joy as the most precious treasure of your life. Let no injustice, no cruelty, no loss steal it from you. Remember always that your response to suffering is yours alone to choose. You may not control the years, but you can control the spirit with which you live them. The world may wound you, but you decide whether to let the wound become your identity or your strength.

Practical action must follow. Each morning, no matter your circumstance, pause to give thanks for one small thing—breath, light, friendship, memory. Place a smile upon your face, not as denial, but as declaration: that you are more than your troubles. In hardship, practice love even when anger tempts you. For to love in the face of hate is to claim the highest freedom. Carry this teaching forward, as Anthony Ray Hinton carried it through thirty stolen years, and let it shape your days.

Thus the teaching is sealed: time may be stolen, but joy cannot be stolen unless surrendered. Anthony Ray Hinton stands among the heroes of endurance, reminding us that the heart is the last fortress, and joy the last weapon. Let us live so that, whatever the world takes from us, it will never take our ability to smile, nor our power to love. For in these lies the truest form of freedom.