Peace is the answer......

8:15 am. The day has just begun. Standing on the tarmac are young soldiers. On their shoulders duffle bags, on their minds; will I return?

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind" said Mahatma Gandhi.

"It's an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war" said John F Kennedy.

"We must all make peace so that we can all live in peace" said Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

A photographer, braving the early hour and dismal weather, directs his powerful lens toward the soldiers waiting in line to get on the transport plane. Suddenly one of them turns his head, and looks straight into the eyes of the photographer and for a split second, they connect. Click! The intensity of the expression in the young soldier's eyes unsettles the photographer so much that he lowers his camera, no more pictures are needed.

With an almighty roar the plane takes off and the photographer with camera in hand walks back to his car.

In the car driving back to his studio, he can't stop thinking about the young soldier. As soon as he is back in the studio he flips through the shots he took until he finds the one...the one he knows he can get published, the one with the piercing gaze, the one he knows he can never forget.

It did get published, although the back story of the image comes from my own imagination but the young man is a soldier and he is being deployed. 

"Peace is a stress-free state of security and calmness that comes when there's no fighting or war, everything coexisting in perfect harmony and freedom" is one definition of peace, there are others.

Interesting to me is that the words compassion, understanding, tolerance and acceptance don't get much of a mention in regards to peace. "Peace can not be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding" so said Einstein.

During the worst of the fighting and unrest in Ireland, a man by the name of Danaan Parry had an idea that if people could connect and understand each other, peace may be possible. He managed to gather people from opposing sides into a large hall with a painted, thick white line in the middle of the hall.  Considering that the trouble had been going for many years, with many lives lost on both sides, ...the hall was a powder keg. With the warring parties staring at each other from opposite sides of the hall, Danaan asked all the people who had lost a parent due to the conflict to take a step forward.....next, all those who had lost a child, then those who had lost a sibling, a friend, a neighbour, any kind of relative, a work mate, and so on......

By the time he had finished asking, all the people were standing in the middle, on the white line, face to face, and they realised that they had ALL lost somebody they cared for, and this they all had in common. Their pain. A beginning of understanding, a beginning of compassion, the beginnings of peace.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnfkenn135037.html#p7h3KFf1wHy3hICE.99

"Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding barriers, quietly building new structures". (John F Kennedy)

"If civilisation is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace". (Franklin D Roosevelt)

Perhaps at times one may be tempted to think that its "about economy and economics" rather than about peoples. That it's about power and domain, rather than individual human beings. Peace, some may say, hinges on the balancing act between those in power and those who seek to have it.

For some, war is an "opportunity",.... for a greater income, for mobility, for procurement", et cetera.

To me, basically war has always seem a bit like "We want what you have, and if you don't give it to us, we are going to take it anyway" or "you're not thinking the right way, so now we are going to make you think our way/the right way, hook or by crook".

"Peace", on the other hand, "cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding"  so said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace". (Gandhi)

Perhaps if we begin with being at peace with ourselves, we may find it easier to be at peace with others? And if we can learn to love ourselves, we may also find it easier to love others...

In the words of John Lennon..."Give peace a chance, and why not add....... love and understanding. For a moment, just imagine walking in someone else's shoes; enemy, opponent or competitor....

P E A C E