The Search for Self-Peace
Self-peace seems like a mysterious thing, in that it doesn’t reside in everyone. Thinking about it more deeply, one can see that life is subdivided into minds, and that every mind participates somewhat differently from others. Peace, after all, is not inherently a shared quality, but one of entirely personal volition. Therefore, what can we objectively know to be self-peace, if we only have ourselves as an irrefutable reference point? Do we even know our own patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior, such that we could be peaceful? These questions are not easy, but they definitely demand answers.
The first step in such an investigation obviously concerns our own subjective worlds, given that we have a unique frame of reference. It is not exactly easy to understand why we think and feel different things in various moments, since it would seem we are one consistent unity. And yet, changes in circumstance, changes in mood, even changes in intention, can appear to shape our reality in an inalterable way. Furthermore, given that we act one way when we are alone and another when we are with others, it is worthwhile to grasp how it is that we can have our own unique will, free from influence.
The reason I am interested in an objective conception of peace is simple: if a person lives their whole life with certain core assumptions, they are bound to get caught up in them, and cannot possibly hope to know anything outside of that. The fault of the modern world is quite simple, in that it doesn’t let us breathe — attempting to find peace is not simply a struggle with oneself, but it is also a struggle with the world, wherein we feel guilty if we nonconform too much. It is foolish to suppose that a person could be at peace if they are constantly preoccupied with the next goal, the next person, the next experience, and simply admitting that to ourselves might be the first step.
There seems to be a connection between self-peace and self-awareness — if one understands that they have certain insecurities, compulsive patterns of behavior, or dogmatic assumptions, then one can simply begin reconstructing themselves. However, if someone is not self-aware, they’ll fall further into their dogma and insecurities and compulsive patterns, making life harder for everyone around them. Any person who falls into the mental trap that they are “getting closer to the truth” is obviously straying further away from it — this is particularly true when rational people around you are explaining, with perfect clarity, that you have a long way to go. Humility seems like a shortcut to wisdom sometimes, in that you don’t assume anything extraneous.
Another interesting thing is about how we perform ourselves in the world, and whether our way of doing so is sometimes unproductive. When we are given a choice between being for its own sake and being for the sake of others, we must consider what we’re actually doing: in the first case, one can be at peace, knowing they owe nothing to anyone, and they are in a great position to help; in the second case, one feels the need to help everyone, thereby doing a poor job, and they also neglect to help themselves. If we are not at peace, it doesn’t help us to live through the eyes and mind of a person who is at peace — rather, we are tasked with finding our own sense of peace. In this sense, though the subjective is presiding over our search for peace, the actual feeling of peace is real, and quite irrefutable to anyone who really has it. That is to say, we are given a choice about having self-peace or not.
I believe no life could be peaceful if the person living it is in disarray. Though one’s life is somewhat separate from their thoughts and feelings, it can be said that the two directly influence one another. If a person wakes up in the morning, feeling slated to their fate and not able to see a light at the end, that person is quite a lost soul. Even if someone’s life seems well on the surface, the quality of their thoughts and their ability to maintain their feelings takes greater long-term precedence, particularly when things are difficult. Some random conception like, say, job security, might seem reassuring to a person who needs it to survive — but outside the possibility of that job, what does the person have that can be called ‘their own’? Waking up in the morning, slated to one’s fate, can a person really call themselves ‘happy’? And so, if we are to have self-peace, we must also consider the value of mental and emotional freedom. We must try to understand how we get into particular situations, how we can prevent bad eventualities from happening, and how we can learn to take both good and bad news with equally temperate disinterest.
Peace is not merely about a life lived well.
It is also about a fulfilling life lived in good conscience.
Thank you.
