Peace

"Peace be with you. And also with you." Those were words I heard at least once a week when I was growing up. And I never really thought about them. What does it mean to have peace with you? We live in a world where people kill each other over whose God is better, the oil in the ground, and soon I suspect, the water. I live in a country where we scream at each other on the roads, where a woman is on a hunger strike to draw some attention to her people's struggle, where there are protests asking the government to look into missing women, and where the gap between rich and poor is widening.

We are bombarded with advertisements telling us that we are not good enough, not rich enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough, not sexy enough, that we don't have enough stuff, and that the stuff we do have isn't enough.

So how do we have peace with us in this society of GO GO GO? And is it something we can have? Something to find? Or something to just do. Be peaceful. That's what it means to me. It's like hope. Hope just means I'll keep trying. Peace just means I'll be happy with what's happening around me, and work to make it how I want it.

How do I bring that into my life? I definitely am working on that! I'm much much happier with the kids, accepting them just as they are, and working to help them be everything they can be. Like every other parent. But damn, that's hard sometimes, because I let my hopes for them become something I'm hanging my happiness on, instead of just being a thing I'm trying to make happen. I don't need things to go my way in order to be happy. Imagine that. :)

And so I want peace to be with all of us. Let us all be happy in whatever situation we're in, and work our asses off to get what we want. It's wonderful to have wants. I want a jigsaw. I want to end world poverty. The former is rather likely to happen on Christmas morning (though if not, I'll still be happy). The latter probably won't happen in my lifetime. But what the hell, I can still work for it. If all of us do, it will happen.

So that's my prayer for the week. That I may be peaceful in my day to day life. That I remember that I don't need anything to be happy. I just need to breathe.