Finding Peace

 Peace is underrated. If we are at peace, we are surely happy and contented, and in a state where we can experience joy. As an individual goal, perhaps there is none better.

 

It is not a coincidence that individual peace features so abundantly in the gospels, and in our liturgies. No doubt it is the same for other faiths. “Peace be with you” is one of the most common utterances, for good reason.

 

And at the end of life, helping residents to find an inner peace is a goal of the nuns running the home where we volunteer. They channel their own faith in support, but they are not imposing that faith on the residents. But they try to help the people to reconcile themselves to death by reaching a state of peace. Of course trying to reduce their levels of physical pain is a part of this process.

 

At its best, the renaissance music we love also exudes a sense of peace. Perhaps our favourite CD is by an a cappella group called The Sixteen with the title Music for Inner Peace. Invariably when we play it, the music weaves its magic and achieves the desired effect. I find it especially helpful when surrounded by noisy traffic and impatient New York drivers.

 

I am not advocating that we all lounge around in our bedroom slippers all day and become inactive. Peacefulness is not the same as inactivity. Indeed, if we are bored or slovenly, we may find it hard to achieve a state of peace. Time can drag and our thoughts can cause anxiety.

 

I am also not advocating that we should all explore drugs, or even become monks and nuns, though I sometimes envy the simplicity and certainty apparent in many of their lives.

 

Indeed, peace is one of those life goals that is treated more as a desired outcome than the result of a series of inputs. This is true for happiness and joy as well. Frantically seeking out these things, whether via retreats or drugs or sleep monitoring devices or the faddish ideas of some guru, risks being counterproductive.

 

Simplicity as a goal can be similar, in business as well as our personal lives. I witnessed many business campaigns aiming for simplicity, and they generally failed. I found that simplifying the business model itself was the key to achieving a simple business. What is our essence and our edge? What activities, products and customers are fundamental to those things? What stops us from eliminating everything else?

 

So, finding an inner peace is a great goal, yet actively searching for peace is likely to fail. Yet last month one of our kids paid me a big compliment when remarking that I exuded peace. I don’t think that she was saying that I had become a vegetable. So it set me thinking. Is that true? If so, how did I achieve that?

 

I reached for another tool familiar from a business setting, that is to look to opposites. If actively searching for peace is a chimera, how about trying to avoid its opposites?

 

Miriam Webster offered three overlapping definitions for peace, and many antonyms for each of these. Peace can be seen as a state without war, a freedom from disturbing thoughts or a freedom from disturbance. Antonyms are respectively conflict, stress or dread or anguish, and commotion or uproar. Now these are things we can usefully work on. 

 

Some conflict in life is almost inevitable. Rolling over and not sticking up for our rights and values is no recipe for peace – that will make us full of anguish. So the goal must be to avoid unnecessary conflict, to handle conflict, and to resolve conflict.

 

The religious example here is about resolving conflict. In Christian homilies, we are often offered the good advice to reach out to those with whom we have a broken relationship, one with suspicion and unresolved issues. This also forms a key element of twelve-step programs. This is tough to do, but it is easy to see how it can be effective. After some initial posturing, the other party will welcome our advances, and both of us can remove a simmering cause for the absence of peace.

 

As for avoiding and handling conflict, we should not run away from conflict completely, but try to learn skills of communication and of seeing things from the point of view of the other side. In my case, less impulsive showing off by putting others down would surely help. More fundamentally, we can to extent choose our relationships, especially the one with a prospective life partner. If, after a while, we find that we don’t often fall into conflict and that we resolve disputes easily, perhaps we are well matched. Dating websites might do well to emphasise that ability over a photo image or how somebody like animals or some boy band.

 

The second antonym is about fear, stress and anguish. Some of us find this easier than others. It certainly helps if we can love ourselves enough to be constantly regretful, or full of guilt, or with egos that need reassurance over what others are thinking about us. Finding peace with ourselves is key here. I like the commandment to love the Lord thy God (which I interpret of having the humility to accept fate), and to love thy neighbour as thyself. The part that we often forget is to love ourselves.

 

To an extent, we can also learn to live our lives to avoid the things that make us fearful or anxious. Choosing relationships come back here, but also choosing activities, and choosing where to take a risk for a thrill and where to be more cautious.

 

Then the last antonym is commotion or uproar. This is the one that advertisers and bankers undervalue, because they want us to live uproarious lives that involve spending more money. Being motivated to post an image a day on Instagram from a new location, activity or relationship might feed our ego in the short term but is likely to work against peace over time. We can make compromises. I love living in the city for its culture and vitality. But the incessant noise and reckless and angry behaviour by fellow drivers this morning made me feel anything but peaceful.

 

Another source of both commotion and anger can be following the news. Our news feeds and the lazier TV channels seek to funnel outrage, so they can get more clicks and perhaps to support the causes of their benefactors. We will do better if we proactively choose when and how to stay to up to date with current affairs. Again, social media do not help here. But the solutions are easily within our reach. I love to read The Economist and The Guardian Weekly, from cover to cover and at a measured pace, and to avoid too much impulsive searching for stories. Following the war in Ukraine from outrage to outrage is hardly a recipe for our peace (and still less, theirs), but I find I can keep some perspective and emotional balance by choosing my outlets and my frequency of updates.

 

There are other avenues to dig into here, and perhaps it will be a good holiday project for me to explore some of them. I am sure I could adjust my habits to yield more peace without sacrificing very much. My daughter’s welcome pronouncement I am doing that well already is no reason to ignore the possibility of doing better still. 

 

Peace might be the most underrated of all goals. At a personal level, peace in hearts and peace in relationships must be the best recipe for harmony. It is hard to imagine people at peace with themselves committing horrifying acts, or even allowing their nations to wage war or harbour grudges. A few elements of modern society conspire against us, but, unless we have more mental health issues than most or our circumstances are unusually tough, the remedies are readily available to us.