PEBBLES ON THE ROAD TO PEACE “WORLD PEACE” has always seemed like a grand notion. Visionaries imagine it, world leaders speak about it, organizations promote it, governments try to negotiate it, nations strive to keep it. And the need for world peace grows more critical while it seems ever more out of reach as the devastation of life brought about by destroyers and defenders of peace escalates. In this “technologically-omnipotent” age, our world has become too small for a “stink” to be made anywhere without smelling it everywhere. Information travels at the speed of internet light, and the high-tech arsenals of nations and warring ideologies are acquiring comparable reach. On the American home front, individuals are also experiencing, en masse, disturbances of personal peace on every level of our everyday lives. Jobs and homes are being lost or put at risk, monies and other assets wiped out or diminishing rapidly, and the domino effect of ailing or failing industries is so far-reaching that no one who has to earn a living is immune. AND YET, despite all this and more, despair is not the prevailing wind. When have we last seen the power of so many individuals coming together toward a positive common cause? When have we seen the magnitude of hope and commitment expressed by a majority of collective individuals in our country who have been willing to choose a higher caliber of change? As our acquisitional powers have been curbed and we have become more aware of the disparity between what we say we value and how we actually spend our time, our money, ourselves and each other -- we are discovering the riches we’ve always had that can’t be bought. Peace is often mistaken for the status quo being maintained. However, when the status quo is maintained at the expense of our own or other peoples’ well being, that is not peace. This ill-bought status quo that has so long served the self-interest of the few has finally resulted in a disturbance of life-quality to which no one is immune. And what a great gift and opportunity for us all! We woke up. It got our attention. So -- something else is in the air here where hope and hard times are jammed up so close together. And in keeping with the idea that we are still “the land of opportunity,” I think this is the new opportunity we are being offered now: At every level of peace-seeking -- personal, interpersonal, community and global -- our most profound hurts and difficulties are revealed only when we have the greatest possibility for healing. So what is arising from within this paradox that can save the world? – I think it is ourselves…us…we…I. Every single person, awakened and impassioned, willing and committed, multipled by all of us. In a world in which we have so long referred to governments, corporations and organizations as “them” and individuals as “us,” we are waking up this fact: there is no they, there is only WE. They and them are terms used by us individuals when we have a sense of being disenfranchised of our voices, our power, our ability to change the way things are. But that is all changing now. We are beginning to see that our leaderships and governments and nations and organizations are populated with individual people who have their own personal stories and special interests with varying degrees of greed and entitlement or altruism and accountability. How many globally impactful acts and chains of events are initiated every day through a decision made by a single individual -- i.e., one human in the throes of a very human life on a particular day in which he or she might have gotten up on a side of the bed which will lead to a decision affecting millions of lives? History has given us some awful and some wonderful examples. And our current events are exposing more and more very striking examples of both every day. As I watch the trends of our time move toward the empowerment and influence of individuals, I wonder -- as Glenn Reynolds' book, An Army of Davids, suggests -- could the world actually be saved by the intelligence, heartfulness and commitment of collective individuals? And, if we look at the state of the world as the effect of collective individuals, then how do we, as individuals, go about changing it to a place more harmonious and life-affirming for ourselves, each other and thus ultimately for all of us? For all the shoulda-woulda-coulda's that often plague us not only about our personal lives and goals, but also our role in the bigger-picture world, I think we can ever only start from where we are. As I have thought more and more over the last year about peace and what it means to me, I realize there is a growing hunger in my belly for personal peace. Amidst long daily hours of “musical hats” and fragmented multi-tasking, I -- like so many friends and colleagues -- am craving a simpler, less cluttered and demanding life. I see the toll my too-busy life takes on my heart, soul and proverbial peace of mind -- as I watch little pieces of my Self seem to crash and offload from one demand or disturbance to another, leaving less and less of me available to do what truly brings me peace. Buoyed now by the national energies of change and new beginnings, I am making a commitment toward a new level of personal peace. Of course, on this train of thought, I just happened to run across a pamphlet by Byron Katie summarizing her “Loving What Is” philosophy. Just the phrase itself brings me back to a place of possibility. We can always start from where we are. It is not the present that is overwhelming – it is the seeming weight of the past or the worry of the future that defeats and demoralizes us. When we start where we are, we don’t have to be anywhere or anyone else. When we start where we are, we consent to our lives. We accept the present -- without longing or judgment or living in the anxiety of shoulda-woulda-coulda. Accepting how we feel, what we look like, what we have or don't, who we are in any given moment brings us -- ta-da! -- instant personal peace. And what is the immediate effect of personal peace? Paradoxically, it frees us to receive the gifts of inspiration and creative solutions for changing “what is” to what we would like it to be. So lately I'm choosing to not answer the phone every time it rings, especially when my hands are full or I’m eating or I’m on the other phone! For peace of heart, I'm spending more time with myself without feeling guilty about it. For peace of mind, I’m creating a new order in my own little world, clearing and reorganizing my workspace so I can think better, and cleaning out closets and cabinets so I can move around my house a little easier. If you want to know what personal environmental peace feels like, go stand in a cleaned-out empty closet for a few minutes, and breath in the space! For peace of soul, I am writing more…praying more….being grateful more. For interpersonal peace, I’m letting some of my urges to advise and teach waft away in the opportunity to listen and appreciate. I am enjoying natural affinity with some, and allowing non-affinities to be as they naturally may for now, without anxiety or attempts to protect or defend myself. However, I must admit that this accepting and being at peace stuff takes practice. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever master it. But I’m feeling that peace, like love, is an alive and kinetic thing, always inviting us to recalibrate to its life-affirming crosshairs. So I suspect it's not something to be achieved -- but rather something that must be allowed and practiced in our thinking, attitudes and actions from moment to moment, within oneself and from one self to another. And if we do not ever arrive at peace -- then it is something we must always journey with. No matter what difficulty or cacophony or warring is going on in our lives, life is always giving us a choice to choose peace. Even in the middle of a war between ideologies, when individuals from opposing sides have had a moment's recognition of their sameness of heart, they have sometimes let each other pass. During the time I was writing this article, a friend told me a story her father recounted to her about having rappelled down a cliff one day during the Second World War, only to be faced mid-way down with a gun-toting Japanese soldier at the mouth of a cave. As they looked at each other for a long moment, they somehow understood that they were both fathers. And they let each other pass. Amazingly, years later that U.S. soldier's daughter (my friend), whose father came home from that war, met the children of that Japanese soldier whose father also lived through that day to come home to his family. So then, world peace…one person at a time. If I live at peace with myself, and you do the same, and we live in peace with each other, can we be peace-stones in a small pond that ripple out into the world? How many individuals would it take to start a tsunami of peace right here and now? A wave big enough to wash over into the lives our children and theirs? Or, to mix metaphors, if world peace is not just a making of Earth, can we put that moon on a string? Can we rope that much light together? The answer to that may not fully come in my lifetime. But if we start now, it just might be answered -- and even accomplished -- in the lifetimes of our children. _____________________________________ This article is in preparation for a blog with the same title, which I hope to have up soon. I’d like to continue this as a discussion – to hear from you your ideas about personal peace, interpersonal peace and community/global peace. What does peace mean to you -- what do you need to experience peace on a daily basis? And how do you or might you practice peace in your own life, work and relationships? How do you experience or help to bring moments of peace to your “larger circles” or groups, organizations and community? Or what are your ideas and explorations about how the peace of individuals can be expanded and multiplied into our greater communities -- and do you know people who seem to be doing just that and who might inspire the rest of us…. READER COMMENTS From Nancy 1/17/09 ~ Thank you so much for the beautiful card [Pebbles on the Road to Peace]. Your words bring such hope and inspiration and are so in line with my hopes and dreams for the Obama-Biden Administration and what they will all bring to the U.S. and the world at whole. To say this is historic is such an understatement. Few people are probably aware that in Charleston Mississippi, they still have a segregated prom in the High School that Morgan Freeman graduated from. In 1997, he offered to pay for a non-segregated prom but no one listened. It took 11 years for that High School to take him up on his offer, Prom Night 2008. There was still a "white only" Prom attended by a mere 24 students or so, but many in Charleston are hopeful. I am too. I am so amazed and truly saddened at the sheer hatred humans can have for another, and they don't even know each other. That is where your works of literary art resonate for me. I pray for more people like you who will put pen to paper and inspire thought and genuine greatness in all its forms. I hope for a renewed faith in humanity and as always, I dream of peace in this world….
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