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Friends United
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September/October 2009
Peace Notes:
Peace Begins With Me
By Michael Brand, 9th Grade
The subject of peace always seems to get stuck on possibility, and whether or not it is possible. Some would say peace is the ultimate goal of humanity, and some would say that peace is a word thrown around by politicians to confuse us. The argument of peace should not be on its possibility, but on its scale. The scale at which peace is addressed, whether personal, local, national or global will be what determines its possibility. This is how I know peace begins with me. Peace begins with me because on a personal scale, it’s the only place that we know peace can exist to the fullest extent. The best way to go about making ourselves more peaceful, is as simple as making ourselves better. By becoming morally strong, mentally strong and physically strong, we can pursue peace to the gates of Hell, without ever firing a gun or sending in the troops.
The first step in bettering ourselves is in our moral being. As human beings, we’re subject to a certain level of choice. These choices usually revolve around right and wrong, but it is much unlike the old aphorism. Crime does pay; however most of us understand that the payoff of taking a shortcut and doing something wrong is not the same worth of doing something right. However, it’s not something we should ignore, it happens all the time. From corporate crimes, like those that took down Enron; to murders, like that of China Arnold who put her baby in the microwave in 2005; to thefts and more, we all do bad things. If we could learn that the right way often pays off more than the wrong way, we could increase our overall well being. We could become the generation whose revolutionaries are not warriors but leaders. We could become nonviolent, simply by being moral in everything we do.
We all need to learn how to learn more and more often as thinking is the greatest gift humankind has received. This is the second step to peace on a personal level. By striving to become more intelligent, more reasonable and more levelheaded, we can find solace in the fact that we have the ability to be creative and calm people. With intelligence, you can do anything you are willing to work hard to get. Examples of such things would be: Bill Gates rising from a middle-class family to invent the modern computer and become one of the world’s wealthiest people; Mahatma Gandhi defeating the British Empire without violence; and Stephen Hawking who, despite his ALS, has made amazing contributions to the field of science and still is with the help of a voice synthesizer. Along with countless others, they are examples of why intelligence is important. Intelligence represents progression towards what’s good and right, and by extension progression toward peace.
Physical strength is the final step, and is no less important than the other two. It isn’t about being physically fit necessarily, although that is certainly good, but about having the physical strength to work hard and to not work towards what you know isn’t right. Somewhat along the lines of actions speaking louder than words, what you work towards will eventually be used to define some portion of your character. It’s the physical strength to remain steadfast in the face of others doing wrong things, and continue doing what’s right no matter how strenuous or frustrating it is. It is also not lashing out violently, because that only allows you to sink down to their level. It’s the physical action of persisting, and persisting for all the right reasons.
These three steps do not guarantee a perfect world, and I know this, but they will have the biggest impact on a person as far as becoming more peaceful is concerned. As humans, we’re subject to making mistakes, it’s in our nature. Once we figure out how to carry out all three of those steps, we need to learn to live and let live. We as people aren’t going to be completely happy or satisfied all our lives, and we need to learn to live through the hard times simply so we can get back to the good times. Regret, injustice, unfairness, ignorance, racism, sexism and other such things will always exist, but we can learn to overcome them. We can use them as fuel, motivation, reasons why we can’t stop being better people. Peace begins with me because peace begins with you. We’re all just people, and peace is part of our nature just as conflict is. I’m in no position to say “yes” or “no” to the question on whether or not world peace is possible. I’m in no position to say whether or not it’s possible even on a national level. I can say, however, that peace is completely and irrefutably possible on a personal level. We may never achieve the perfect world, but I know we can make our world considerably better just by trying. In fact, it’s something we all know to be true.
This essay is one of the winners of the Witness and Service 2009 Peace Essay Contest.