Children learn everything they become to understand from what happens around them. As they grow they formulate values and mindsets from what they experience. This is the exact same for society because society is made up of those children. Society is the collection of all our values, actions, mindsets, wants, needs and goals. This is the main reason that peace starts in the individual.
On the world stage, I believe that there has been a serious lack of good leadership for decades. That lack of good leadership has brought social unrest, war and global mistrust to the forefront in every part of the world. What is most curious is that these issues have always been the most poignant of tasks in peace. In the world today the many calls for equality, justice, fairness and basically peace have been the message all along. The only question is; What has stopped us from taking the past calls of peace more seriously?
There is a phrase which often comes to mind throughout everyday, "No government or group acts without the will of the people." When I see a principal of a school scold a child because that child is an easy target, a politician stoke the fires of hatred and fear because it is an easy way to get applause, a person call on others to "do their job" while they sit and do nothing, when I see society complain about the lack of funding and then witness food being thrown out, the massive piles of useable goods thrown away to garbage dumps, these are the testaments of the will of the people. These are the culmination of the "it is just easier to do this" mindset. This is the path we have taken for many years as a society while each of us looks the other way and speaks of their efforts to improve.
I am guilty of such actions as well. I have watched, talked and did nothing to help the children of my community who I know are on a path of destruction through very little fault of their own. I have filed to give such children the supportive environment the need and desire. Which is why I am writing this because at the very root of peace is the individual. This is my wake up call after years of inaction. I know what a society that is crumbling looks like and we are living it right now.
Peace is not easy. It is being calm when someone is yelling in your face. It is truely working to understand the other person when you are dead tired and just want to be left alone. It is stopping yourself from taking the easy action of authoritarianistic actions of yelling, ordering, demanding and calling out the other. Peace is about putting yourself at the same level of the person in front of you and working to get both of you to a better place. That is very difficult work, that is what I must do vastly better at accomplishing. I hope others will help me in that work to improve peace in society.
