Peace

I grew up in a home and society that tacitly accepted verbal and physical abuse as a fact of life. I know my parents loved me because they cared deeply about me, but I stopped feeling safe after turning 7, when they started meting out corporal punishment and emotional blackmail to get me to tow the line. They stopped shielding me from their anger and angst with life, and I grew up longing for unconditional love and for freedom to have my own space to feel and be.

As the years passed by, I read about and saw poverty, war and destruction and realized that the fights in my home were a common denominator among all mankind. “You sometimes have to be cruel to be kind,” my father would say. But to me it didn’t feel right deep down to see people choose such malicious consequences to get what they want from life. So I grew up thinking that to be an ambassador of peace, perhaps I should stop wanting and stop speaking up. I should serve others and create a heaven on earth with my giving. The words of Jesus to give your tunic along with your coat became my life’s purpose. Gandhi and Mother Theresa became my role models of selfless earthly martyrdom.

But I eventually lost my identity and purpose in this world as I martyred myself constantly. I often beat myself up with regret for the times I did speak up and fought for what I believed in because having a fiery spirit and coming from an aggressive home, the only model I had was one of anger, where people spoke up harshly in a fit of temper. I ended up hurting the people around me every time I cared too much. I hated myself often, wondering how I could possibly love deeply and yet be a verbal and physical threat to those in my care whenever I let life overwhelm me. I saw my father in myself and felt sorry for my husband and children, and even my friends. I became withdrawn and fell into depression, slowly eking away inside and became a shadow of the person many knew I could have been.

But one day two years ago, my father died unexpectedly. We had not spoken very much over a long time because I was still struggling to find peace in his presence. My husband, facing health challenges, took a turn for the worse soon after and my life hung in balance. I nearly ended it, along with the lives of my children, at that point. But I reached out instead, some part of my heart still longing for a happy ending. That was the turning point of my life.

I began a soulful journey to clear out the basement of my heart from the many nasty rats living and breeding there, accumulated over years of ‘keeping the peace’ for all the wrong reasons, in all the wrong ways. For far too long I had kept inconvenient truths and secrets hidden away, unwilling to bother others and rock their boats. I had already killed myself inside many times over denying my need to be authentic at the cost of being ‘peaceful’ and maintaining the status quo. I had given up trying to participate in global causes once the stresses and challenges of a special care family made me feel small that I could not, with just two hands, do more beyond my own door. On the rare occasions I posted small cheques to disaster victims or orphanages, I ended up feeling as small as the stamps on those envelopes as I compared myself to Gandhi and Mother Theresa. A poor peace-keeper in my own eyes, influenced by the definitions of the common status quo, I had given up trying to make a difference in the world.

I live a very different life now. Two years after my father’s death, and a year after beginning my search for freedom from depression and to find my true self, I have been asked to share about the meaning of peace. If it appears to others I have it, I can only say that it has been gained through a great journey of self-love and brutal honesty with myself in reframing childhood memories, redefining relationships, reconstructing long held beliefs and removing negative blocks. And from the well spring of peace within myself found by forgiving and letting go of all I could not have changed and accepting all that I am and should not change, I can daily gain freedom to be the conduit of peace and love my heart has always longed for.

If I must talk about peace, I can only say what I have learnt.

• Peace is not a state of mind. It is a state of Being. If you can’t just BE at peace, then there are still some personal issues to work through and a lot of self love (not to be confused with selfishness) to be dished out to get through them.
• Peace involves a lot of forgiving and accepting. The hardest to be forgiven and accepted is usually ourselves. But once we do that, it becomes almost natural to forgive and accept others. Peace will then flow in and through us.
• Being involved in global peace concerns isn’t as much a matter of the hands as it is a matter of the heart. Simply WANTING WITH ALL MY HEART for victims in poverty, war or disaster to be safe, to be loved and to feel free again is far more powerful than sending a cheque or being there personally just because it’s something everyone else is doing. In short, doing isn’t a measure of your capacity to make a change. Loving is. A small act of love creates collective momentum far greater than a large act of the ego.
• Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Jesus are my inspirations but just because I do not touch lives to the scale they did does not mean I love lesser than them. In EACH AND EVERY ONE of us, there is the capacity to be heralds of love and peace as they were. All they did was follow their heart AT ALL COSTS. We often forget how much they were jeered and castigated for living out their passion. The difference between them and many of us is that they conquered their fear. Fear is the polar opposite of Love.
• Children raised in Heart Love cannot be spoiled. They learn self love naturally. It is children raised in Ego Love that are susceptible to the dangers of hurting others. They learn selfishness.
• Judgement often precedes hurtful responses and reactions. Peace involves choosing our own beliefs without imposing them on others, as well as giving others space for their varying convictions. And if tempted to judge, it’s useful to ask myself why I feel so insecure and do something about that instead.
• Peace always means non-violence. But it does not necessarily mean non-resistance. There are many ways to further a cause or make a stand lovingly and effectively without hurting others. If others choose to FEEL hurt, we can be at peace knowing that their negative perspective on the matter is a choice they make and is not something we have forced upon them.
• Being inert is not the same as being peaceful. PeaceFULL implies someone who is consciously choosing to bring peace into the world through their choices. INERTtia means staying put due to a state of nature. Someone who is unconsciously harmless is not necessarily peaceful. At any point, such individuals could cause harm, intentionally or otherwise, by withholding affection, keeping indifferent or merely being unavailable. I spent a lifetime, to my detriment, trying to emulate inert people and gathering inert friends not knowing the difference between the two.
• Peace for a person in Borneo may not be the same as peace for a person in Europe. But neither has the better view. Geography and History shape much of our wants and needs and personalized adaptations to the planet we live in. Global peace may be best found within each of us trying to be the best version of ourselves exactly where we find ourselves to be. Then we can find the common denominator within us, Spirit, which transcends and stays unchanged by Geography or History. Finding Spirit enables us to find the capacity for Real Love – the Guardian of Peace.

Love and Light to you as you walk your own path..