Personal Peace
So often, we focus on global peace. While this is certainly a valuable endeavor, it is also important to consider the importance of personal peace.
In our culture, time is of the utmost importance. It is to be scheduled, used constructively, spent, lost, gained, or killed. Many times, Americans are more concerned with getting things done on time (aka on a predetermined, arbitrary schedule) than they are with developing deep interpersonal relations or maximizing intellectual benefit. Many time, this preoccupation with time comes at a cost to personal peace. Personal peace has to do with being content, fulfilled, living a satisfying purposeful life, and having balance between work and leisure. For me, I know I struggle between wanting to “do it all” (perfectly, of course), and between saying no because I know despite my best efforts, there will never be more than 24 hours in each day. When my life is balanced; when I feel purposeful, effective, and at peace with myself. I am much more productive. I have better health, and enjoy my life more because each experience I engage in has more meaning to me, and I interact with my life more. One clumsy way to describe this is to say that when I have “personal peace”, I am happier.
What would happen if more people tried to create balance in their lives and strived to live in a fashion where they ended each day feeling peace in their hearts? If each person was personally at peace, how would that change international relations? If people were in harmony with themselves, they would be in a position to discuss and work collaboratively to create a greater peace and harmony. Personal relationship coaches teach that before you are ready to be in a committed relationship with another person, you must first be complete and whole by yourself. Why isn’t this same advice applied to relationships on a grander scale? I’m not advocating for isolationism, but I am hoping that we as humans can begin to acknowledge that peace is a holistic approach, and cannot be accomplish in the western paradigm of “either/or”, but rather in the eastern “both/and”. Meaning that we cannot focus either globally or internally, but must instead incorporate both diplomatic relations, multinational organizations, and national efforts within our own borders. This improves foreign relations, and prepares our own country to be ready to deal with other countries and their different manners of living. Thus paving the way for peace.