People talk of peace, but I’m not sure they understand what it means. There is a difference between peace as a state and as a feeling. I’m not sure about the state, but I don’t think we can achieve it without understanding the feeling.
To me, it isn’t a lack of war or or conflict. It is when there is no regret. When you can live in the moment without longing to be elsewhere, or wanting to talk to someone who isn’t there. When your emotions don’t agitate you. When you can be happy without needing a cause. When there is disappointment, but it doesn’t bring you down. All feelings exist, without influencing each other or you. The dualities of grief and joy, of contentment and dissatisfaction, of love and loathe, don’t cause discord. They exist, opposing each other, their incompatibility lasting in constant chaos, which, instead of creating discord, breeds peace.
I think it’s important to distinguish between contentment and peace. A thesaurus would tell you otherwise, but I feel like there’s more to being at peace than being content or satisfied. When you’re content, you’re okay with everything. When you’re at peace, everything in the world seems okay, not because there is nothing wrong, but because it’s okay that it is wrong.
Your life doesn’t need to be in place for you to be at peace. You don’t have to be free of problems or feelings. All you need is to breathe, to let everything just be – let people do their own thing and not affect you, let your problems sort themselves out and not bring you down. Without the hierarchies that things in your life automatically assume, nothing matters more than anything else. When your problems and your life cease to be the most important things, everything starts to matter as much, or as little.You create this world where you just exist, along with everything else, without anyone or anything overpowering anything else.
And even if this world exists for just a second, you find peace, because at that moment, all the chaos coexists, and no matter how messed up you are, nothing can affect you because you understand that it just simply is. When you do, you can hold the universe without having to be bigger than it, and realise that it isn’t necessarily bigger than you. You breathe, just breathe. And as you breathe in and out, the sweet smell of the universe, it becomes part of your very essence. In that extraordinary moment, there is peace.
