Aggressively Pursuing Peace

I spent the first half of my life aggressively pursuing peaceIn myself (Meditate more! Read more books! Find the Magic Formula!)In my family (See how smart I am and do what I say and we’ll be fine!)And in the world (Protest! Lobby! Canvass! Convince! Enroll! Recycle!)Yet those heartfelt efforts did not generate the experience of peaceThey kept an idea of peace just out of reachAnd dependent upon herding colonies of wildly disinterested catsEventually, all that well-intentioned aggression fried my nervous systemA nervous system, like so many others, tuned to chronic urgencyThe floor was always lavaIt was not a gameMy individual reorientation came through illnessMy sister’s came through griefThe list of specific mechanisms is endlessBut the dynamic at play was:All these ideas you have about what’s right and wrongMaybe take a breathAnd learn to listen instead of dictateTo participate instead of compulsively organizeAlign instead of directFor a person who thought her devotion necessarily had to pay dividends in the worldIt’s a radical reorganization of identity and purposeIt’s also extremely relievingI’m not sure if hamsters think the wheel will get them out of the cageBut it doesn’t, no matter how hard they tryThe wheel appeals to their natural desire to run in their environmentBut it doesn’t fulfill itInstinct redirected to futilityIt also has an antidoteAn intentional design that harnesses the instinctBecause while sometimes little rodents are desperate to find food or escape predatorsEven well-nourished hamsters in the wild continue to run and forageAs a participatory act in the ecologyBut those are two very different points of originOne is panicked, the other is more relaxed.Both are activeOne is generativeLike if the hamster wheel powered an Easy Bake Oven of hamster treatsAll my strain didn’t yield peaceBut my growing peace continues to dissolve strainIt doesn’t make me passiveBut it surely makes me less anxiousAnd more than even my best organizingMeeting hard things softlyInvites a generosity of careThat lets peace growStay tuned to see if I invent an Easy Bake Oven for hamster treats… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com