Peace

I’ve been noticing recently how often the Christian mass refers to peace as an ideal personal state. We wish each other a sign of peace. The blessing talks of the peace which passes all understanding. Grant us peace is the final line of the Agnus Dei. In the last of these, singing or speaking, I always make sure to pronounce grant with a dark English ah vowel, as a one-man protest against my American co-worshippers, which of course is a singularly unpeaceful act.

Some homilies I have heard lately have helped me by expounding on the subject of peace. There are many readings and homilies about forgiveness, and especially about making sure we do not become estranged from anyone in our family. Less convincing was a homily trying to convince me that true peace only comes from God: indeed that homily made me consider a very worldly alternative, a life where peace is the only goal, or at least the dominant goal. I don’t think God is strictly necessary to achieve that.

Another trigger for this thought was observing the old people at the residential nursing home we often visit. The physical lives of residents are of necessity slow and repetitive and sometimes frustrating, but many are as busy mentally as when they were younger. The ones who are happy are most at peace mentally. They are not so anxious about what others think of them or about what services they deserve or are being cheated out of. The peaceful ones have reconciled themselves with their families and with their own former behaviour and actions. Crucially, they have also come to peace with the prospect of their own death; the nuns do a wonderful job in this regard. Those residents mentally at peace are also often the least frustrated physically, being more ready to accept their own limitations and the series of small defeats that the last phases of life entail.

I am not sure if there is any correlation between mental peace and a delay in the onset of dementia, though I would not be surprised if there were. But I do think I have noticed a correlation between peace and the sort of ways dementia afflicts residents. The ones who get angry or intensely frustrated behave as though in very anxious dream-like scenarios, often taken from their earlier life. What are coming back to them, again and again, are scenes of deep stress, and I believe that many of the scenes are sources of unreconciled anxiety. It is a small sample size, but the same residents that seem to suffer the most in later stage dementia seem to be ones that were the least at peace with their surroundings before dementia set in.

So peace might be a great objective in the last phases of life, when by necessity ambition is reduced, but isn’t it a bit of a pathetic goal for earlier? Well, perhaps not. Peace is not the same as idleness. In fact, idleness is the enemy of peace, since it engenders boredom and dissatisfaction. Being active in mind and body fulfils us and leads to feelings of peace.

The best symptom of a peaceful life is one where sleep comes easily. That is not the same as a life filled with sleep, though it will certainly include enough sleep to stay healthy. More, it is about how easily we can fall asleep. Unless we have a chronic medical condition, we should be able to find sleep when we seek it, without too much tossing and turning. If we cannot, there is something in our brain that is not at peace. So the fact that many studies are showing that, in the developed world, we are generally not getting enough sleep, and furthermore are finding it harder to fall asleep, is not a good indicator for society.

We can use our goal of a peaceful life to help us regulate our activities and behaviours. There are numerous possible examples.

One good example is how we vacation. It is telling that commercials for vacations tend to show intimate couples enjoying peaceful meals at sunset in beachside restaurants. The reason for that is that this is indeed what our brains seek from vacations and what healthy vacations look like. But think of your most recent vacations. They might indeed have contained such intimate moments, but what else did we inflict on ourselves to achieve them? How much did we spend? How many hours did we stress ourselves in airport lounges and bus depots and hire cars? How many days did we tick off some place off a bucket list but stress out getting there and fending off other tourists just to get the perfect instagram post? How much misery did we impose on our small kids from disrupting their routines, and ourselves from handling those same kids in their misery?

Now, bucket lists are good and family time is precious. But let us get our priorities in order here. If we start a vacation plan with the top priorities being recharging and intimacy then we might choose differently. Within an hour’s drive nearly all of us have plenty of beauty and nature, often for free. The instagram feed might not be as momentarily impressive as the one with the Taj Mahal in the background, but my guess is that the smiles will look less forced.

A year of vacations might look very different with these priorities. There might be a couple of extra short trips just for the kids, like days in local water parks, but there might also be a longer break where those same kids stay with grandparents. There might still be a Taj Mahal, but not a Machhu Pichu and Table Mountain as well, but instead some local weekends, easier transit and longer stays with simpler plans.

An even more obvious example is how we use our phones. Our phones are brilliant, and they can help us find peace by improving relationships, nurturing curiosity and saving time, for example time in traffic jams or getting lost. But they can also be the enemy of peace. Do we really need an app to measure our sleep? Surely that app will only stress us out and reduce our sleep hours. Meditation type apps might work for some of us, but real meditation and time spent in nature is probably better. And the quest for streaks and photos to share and likes and click bait is surely working against peace, especially late at night. We all know we need to self-regulate our phone use and we all struggle to do it. “Does this help me find peace?” might work as an acid test in this struggle.

More fundamentally, we can ask ourselves if our relationships help us in our search for peace. All forms of intimacy help us feel warm inside. We can achieve intimacy through generosity, acceptance, openness and vulnerability. We can use the prospect of this as a guide in seeking new relationships, as a way of working on our own behaviour, and as a way of improving existing relationships. Then we can enjoy our beachside meals (and what might follow) even more!

I often wonder why my wife and I are in such a great mood every time we return from our service at the residential home. I think peace is at the heart of it. By spending time in a place of peace, with lots of love and a slow pace, those benefits rub off on us. And service itself has a peaceful dividend.

When I watch TV commercials, they often seem to be promoting behaviour that it is opposite of anything that will create peace. They are all about competition, acquisition and ways to get into debt and stress. I guess I should not be surprised, since peace itself is usually free and nobody could pay much for a commercial that doesn’t lead to purchases.

TV commercials, mobile phones, social media and news feeds are usually the enemy of peace. It is no surprise that happiness is correlated first with a lack of war and danger, then with rising income security, but seemingly with an upper limit after which richer societies do not become happier ones. Wealth gives us more opportunities to succumb to the seven deadly sins, an antonym for all of which could be peace. Evolution makes sure that we usually enjoy plenty of the positive benefits of those sins, and we should accept them and even indulge them in moderation. If we choose inner peace as a primary life goal, we can find the antidote.

Writing about peace as a goal made me look up the goals that I set ten years ago for my fifties, but have largely forgotten. Next year I will refresh them for my sixties. But when I read the goals I was quite encouraged, because most of them were very consistent with a quest for peace. With a little good judgement and a lot of serendipity, I have been able to follow the goals quite closely, and a lot of peace has followed. Next time, peace will be at the forefront of the exercise and not just a fortunate side effect.