What Peace Looks Like

Today, as I’m working on getting ready for our next Peace Dance in Lava Hot Springs (11 weeks!) I suddenly started wondering, “What would peace look like?”

We dance for universal peace.

Strangely enough, I realized I don’t have a clear idea of the end game. I do know that some fuzzy picture of everyone walking around smiling all the time as sugar plums fall from the sky… will probably not happen. It would be terrible for our teeth any way!

I know for sure that being human is tricky. We are built to live in small groups in a natural world that does not change very rapidly. We are best when our beliefs hold true during a lifetime, when we know who we are from the day we are born, and when we are not challenged by things we don’t understand. If we are going to live with a fully populated world we are going to constantly face new challenges, and we are going to have to constantly adjust to things as they change.

In other words: People will always go crazy! In the real world peace will have to be dynamic enough to withstand constant change, and ever creative in the way we respond with our human limitations.

We have really crazy limitations. Human beings have an huge capacity to misunderstand what is going on. We are all easily fooled. When things go well it’s easy for us to fall into complacency and not see problems as they build. It’s easy to misunderstand situations as they arise, and it’s really easy to over react. It’s also always going to be true that each generation will forget many of the lessons of the previous generation.

I believe it’s true that we have an unlimited capacity of love. We are all full of curiosity and, when something is interesting to us, we are all eager to learn. We have an amazing ability to communicate with each other, and every single person has something they are brilliant in doing. When lots of people look at a problem then they see it from many different angles.

So what would peace look like?

The more I thought about it the more I realized that peace would look like lots of people, with similar values, who are resilient enough to withstand times when others have gone crazy. There will always be times when folks are either not paying attention, misinformed, or downright wrong about what is going on. There will always be other folks who are actively learning, watching, and paying attention. True peace would mean that the majority of the world is living in sanity and without war at any given time… and those people would be willing to intervene in places that experience temporary troubles. True peace would look like that moment when things go terribly wrong, and millions quickly rise up communicating, finding solutions, chanting and demonstrating change.

I suddenly realized that peace on earth would look exactly like our world today. Good job everyone!

I hope you come and dance with us in April as we exercise and grow our ability to love and be together.