Where Does Peace Begin?
There are several eternal questions I constantly ask myself like: “Who am I?”, “What is freedom?” and “What is the purpose of it all?” Today I can add to this list one more: “Where does peace begin?”
All my life I have been living in Russia – an aggressive and dangerous country. According to the Global Peace Index 2011 Russia occupies 147th place among 153 peaceful states. Being at the bottom of the list means the high level of violence and crime. But the paradox is that the more aggressive you are, the more you start to understand peace.
It is not the instant feeling of serenity when the birds are singing and the warm sun is touching your face. It is not an absence of war or weapons. I don’t believe in the utopian peace that is impossible to achieve. Peace to me means to stay safe while shopping in a local store, to go to work without getting killed in a subway and not to be startled by every knock on the door. It means to get good medical care, to have high-quality schools and to be able to find a job in your own country.
Every day we fight for it. We fight against terrorism, bad government, robbers in our homes, economic crisis, realizing the sense of peace. Sounds cynical but you should first see death, the orphan child or the destroyed house in order to appreciate harmony and calmness. Just like “there can be no happiness without sadness, no light without darkness.” I am, of course, not going to favor a warlike culture, but I consider that good can’t exist without bad. It is impossible to live in the conditions of total kindness. How are we supposed to become better, if always stay at the same level?
I believe that peace is an ideal to strive for because it helps to reach the balance between the black and white sides of reality, helping us recognize the real value of life.
When I think of all said above I remember the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work for it.” This quote helped me to understand where I must begin. Not in the UN resolutions, but in our families. Peace should come from your mother’s hug, from your husband’s kiss, from the first steps of your child. We should start focusing in our relatives and friends, respecting our parents, taking care of our children. Before loving humanity, we should first learn to love each other in our little family world. Only then we could share that inner peace with everybody that we meet in our life.
Post written by Natalia Semicheva from Russia
Picture taken from zawaj.com
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Check out what others are saying...[...] ¿Dónde comienza la paz? [en] Esta es una de las preguntas eternas que se hace Natalia Semicheva constantemente. Ella es de Rusia, un país que de acuerdo al Índice Global de Paz del 2011 ocupa el lugar 147 de entre los 153 estados pacíficos, esto significa un alto nivel de violencia y crimen. Ella argumenta que entre más agresivo seas, más comienzas a entender la paz: No en las resoluciones de la ONU, sino en nuestras familias. La paz debe venir del abrazo de tu madre, de los besos de tu esposo, de los primeros pasos de tu hijo. Deberíamos empezar a enfocarnos en nuestros parientes y cuidar a nuestros hijos. Antes de amar a la humanidad, debemos aprender primero a amarnos entre nuestro pequeño mundo familiar. Sólo así podremos compartir la paz interior con todas las personas que conozcamos en nuestra vida. Foto del usuario de Flickr Trey Ratcliff (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) [...]