Peace in Our Time

Peace, the long sought after word, feeling, belief, and standard that generations before us have tried and failed to achieve.

All of us around the globe want a better future for us and those we love, we want to safeguard “our people.” Over our history we have come together, argued, discussed, prayed, and some have even gone to war and died in an effort to create that future.

We, despite our attempts, have never come close to true peace, using fear or propaganda to provide the illusion of peace. These methods do not work, history has shown this time and time again, as new blood shed shatters that fragile peace once more.

The reason we have failed time and time again is because we have fought to secure that future for only those we deem to be our people. When we seek to separate ourselves from the whole of humankind we create winners and losers. When such an imbalance is created, conflict on any scale becomes inevitable.

History is written by the winners promoting their views as paramount, and hiding their atrocities from future generations. All the while the losing side suffers in one way or another. This suffering leads to fear and like Yoda said, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering.” When one side fears the other and begins to hate, that hate will create another conflict.

Some may say that finding common ground between two desperate groups is impossible. I know that finding common ground after years of suffering on both sides will be tough, but it will save all of us. The road to peace will be the most difficult thing our species has even done. It will require courage on all sides, courage not to take a bullet or invade a city but courage to forgive, courage to rebuild and courage to learn. Defend yourself, but defend every member of your species and all life on and within this planet.

Burying the hatchet will take time, it will require us to look at ourselves to determine what is wrong with not just their position, but ours as well. We will need to look past selfish motivations and old hatreds to build that common ground together.

We all have different beliefs and views, different customs, problems and procedures, but we are all just people at the end of the day. We love our families and friends, seeking to protect them and ourselves from harm. We create sides, these opposing grounds on which we stand apart from eachother. Using the divisions between us to justify horrors, we would never allow on those we love. Using these same grounds to justify taking the rights away from the opposing side thinking it will only strengthen our positions.

However, by doing this to your own species you weaken the ground of which the entirety of the human race stands. When you try to take away the rights of another group of people, you only make it that much easier for your rights to one day be lost as well.

This is why you cannot create sides and force divisions between members of your own species. There are no sides, you either stand with life or you stand on the side of extinction, period.

It’s not about “your people” or “my people,” we have always and will always be one people. No matter the divisions we have created or allowed we are one people connected on far deeper levels than just our DNA. We are alive at this specific time in a vast sea of stars before us holding infinite possibilities.

Humanity has a limitless potential, which we have only begun to understand. From the work of countless generations over hundreds of years we have created masterworks of speech, literary works of Shakespere and Tolkien, DaVincis brushstrokes, Beethoven’ heart and Michelangelo’s hands. We have scaled mountains, charted the planet, landed on the moon and created new freedoms for the betterment of life. We have discovered secrets of spacetime, gravity, and charted farther into the vast space that surrounds us.

Despite these achievements we still have unbound potential and discoveries open to us, both scientifically and religiously. The universe itself is waiting for the human race to discover the light of faraway stars and to breath in new air on countless worlds.

There is so much beauty waiting for us as we take new steps towards our destiny called tomorrow. We must take care for the path to tomorrow is dangerous and filled with dangers known and unknown. Together, we will each see us safely into the new frontier united by the very fact we are alive. All life is precious and we live to love, to allow our hopes and dreams to evolve; to become greater than we were yesterday.

It will take all of us working together to chart that path to ensure the human race reaches the promised land called the future. That infinite future where everyone has a place safe and secure in a lasting peace. One where all life is held in regard, life is beautiful and bountiful, if we choose it. Each day our choices shaping and evolving our path within probability. We can each choose to create that better world by uniting together, all of us.

We can make it, I genuinely believe in humanity and what we can stand for. Our potential is boundless and it lies within the brightest corners of the human heart. It is there where we must look for guidance, the North Star that will lead us into tomorrow is found in love.

Love, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega of our species. We were created by love and we will return to love. Love is the meaning of life, we are here to love without expectation or reward. Love is hard, to learn to love another without expectation of rewards, letting go of assumptions and denying the fear that they might not love you back. It’s placing yourself in a vulnerable position by placing your heart on your sleeve where it can be easily trampled. But I do not see that as weakness for that my friends is courage.

Being heartless or uncaring is easy and safe, which is why the world is in the state it is. Each day broken hearts pass eachother on the street so eclipsed by the hate and indifference of this world that they do nothing. We have all been there it’s easy to fall into that trap.

Feeling they are so powerless and the cause is too big for them. It is said that evil triumphs when good people do nothing. I think that evil is found in the moments were we turn away from helping someone, when we hold on to hate or fear and like a cumulative effect it darkens an already eclipsed world.

Do not despair, there is always hope for us. Each day we wake is a new beginning a second chance to evolve not only who we are but what we stand for. If humanity is going to survive the next decade we need to come together and work towards the betterment of all.

For too long our hearts have been allowed to slumber. Eclipsed by the ever darkening world that we have inherited. We need to start handing down more than broken promises and broken institutions corrupted by wasted potential to those that follow. It’s time to build the future by making better choices today.

As a species we need to stop choosing what’s easy or safe, but instead we need to make things right. We need to stop being reactive, choosing after the fact to address the he issues that plague our world. Treating the symptoms, but forgetting to address the disease or its cause. Instead we need to be proactive, come together without propaganda or red tape, and address the causes to prevent the disease in all aspects of our culture.

We can no longer afford to be shortsighted to see only the next move of our people. We must look far into the future and build society out of hope and love for these tenaments will give us clearer vision not only of who we are, but where we want to go.

The future can be bright if we choose it, if we want it we will shape that perfect future. To do so we must put to rest old hatreds that turn neighbor against neighbor, brother vs brother and sister vs sister. We are one people united by belief, DNA and the divine, it’s time to awaken our potential.

Humanity can claim that future, tomorrow is destined for all but promised to no one. If we are claim our destiny and step into tomorrow it will be together. No one is perfect, but we must all rise above and elevate eachother to that future of infinite possibilities.

“You either create a world for everyone or else you will end up in a world fit for no one.”—John Ames Birch