Personal Peace

I pray for peace and every day I have been leaving a quote by some famous or infamous person on my Facebook page about what peace means and how to attain it.

What I know is that peace has to be individual before it can be global. If I am not at peace with who I am, if I want what others have because they have it and for no other reason, if I am jealous of the number of friends someone has or their car, then I am not at peace with me. If I let the past I survived continue to beat me up and bring me down, I will not know personal peace.

How do I define personal peace? An individual’s state of being that is totally accepting of the circumstances that created the person they are, as being simply that, circumstances. The actions and words of others that impregnated themselves in one’s mind and heart to mean something about them that wasn’t true. Personal peace is about finding that center in ourselves that accepts the past for what it was and decides to be who they truly are in spite of it, with an understanding that we control how we feel about ourselves and the thoughts and expressions of others will not penetrate or crack our resolve. We choose to live in harmony with our own thoughts and feelings and simply be at peace.

Isn’t a bully someone who dislikes themselves so much that they want to hurt others? If we were all at peace on this great planet of Mother Earth, there would be no war because we would all accept the differences that we do not understand. It wouldn’t matter who believed in what Higher Power or who had more land or oil or gold. We would all be so content with who we are, what we believed and the importance of our possessions, that our governments would have no reason to be conflicted.

True Peace has to start with individuals being happy and content; spreading that feeling of surrender to others. Now I just have to figure out how to get my message to the world.

Messages from Everywhere

                We have all heard those stories that are meant to make a specific point. One may call them parables, others just old folklore. Two specific stories have stuck with me. There is a man who is warned that there is a flood coming and he says “I have no worries as I am a religious man and God will protect me.” The flood comes and he is stranded on his roof when both a row boat and a helicopter come to rescue him and once again he responds the same way. Well, the man drowns and when he gets to heaven he demands to speak to God. When he is before Him, he is appalled that God let him die as he had always been such a religious man and why hadn’t he been saved? God simply responded, “I sent you a radio broadcast, a row boat and a helicopter, what else did you want ME to do?”

            The second has great meaning for me. A woman is walking down the street when she falls into a very deep hole. People are passing by, ignoring her pleas for help. A wealthy man walks by and upon hearing the woman cry out her distress, he throws money into the hole. Then a member of clergy walks by and when she sees the woman struggling to climb out, writes a prayer and throws it into the hole. The woman now knows she is doomed to remain in the hole when she looks up and sees her friend walking by. The woman shouts “Dee, can you please help me. I can’t find my way out.” To her surprise, Dee jumps into the hole with her friend. The woman says “Are you crazy, now we are both in this hole.” In all her wisdom Dee responds “Yes, I know but you see, I have been down here before and I know the way out.”

            Sometimes life feels like one big hole that just consumes who we are and we do not trust ourselves and believe in ourselves enough to listen to that voice telling us, sending us the answers. Or maybe we just don’t like the answers or are not willing to push back what feels like this insurmountable fear that we will be so rejected or ignored that nothing we do will matter.

            The question for me then becomes how many messages does it take? I don’t believe there is a set number or that age or really anything else factors into the equation. I am afraid. I sometimes look at my life as being over, not in the terms of death, but in the reality that there are some items on that list that it is too late to consider. My head says this is nonsense and my heart hurts because the dream is still alive.

            Every day I dream about being a published author and every day I read the words of others. I dream of stories that I will write and I write nothing. I start in my head and nothing ever is written. All because: I am afraid. Fear stops us from doing so many things. Maybe the answer is to trust those who send us the messages, to trust those who believe in and love us so much that there is no question for them as to what we can be. I seriously pray that those messages continue until I feel that my life is not over.