THE PATH TO LASTING PEACE

In almost every corner of the world, there is conflict and violence, extreme aggression, destruction, and death. It’s called war. And we’ve been at it since the beginning of time. In fact, over the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history. I understand those aren’t very optimistic numbers, but I still have hope, even if we are living in a powder keg world that is ready to explode with one wrong word, one ill-advised move, perhaps launching us into a war the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

It’s easy to doubt that we will ever find lasting peace, or that we’ll ever know how to go about achieving peace. But this isn’t true. Far from it.

I don’t believe my hope is naïve or misplaced. I believe in spite of what history has led us to believe, or our politicians and leaders, peace is within reach. It’s as close as we want to be. We just need to begin the path to peace from the only place where it will truly grow — within each of us.

As I have been saying for years, Peace begins with ME. Peace begins with YOU. Peace begins with each of us doing our part to bring love, tolerance and acceptance back into our world.

Of course, to understand war, we must first understand why we go to war.