Inner Peace, Like Happiness, Is An Inside Job: How To Develop Peace In The New Year
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(OPINION) As I get older, I find my resolution for each new year is the same.
I don’t need to make a list of resolutions. I just want one thing: Peace.
World peace, sure. But that’s not likely. I’ll settle for inner peace. From January 1 until whenever I ease out of this life, I want to remain mentally and spiritually at rest.
No more drama. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of drama. I’m done with it, and with melodramatic people. I want to fly under the radar.
I want to enjoy my daily devotionals and search for new sushi restaurants with my wife and take my granddaughter to her horseback riding lessons and watch my football games. That’s about it. I have no pressing ambitions. I have nothing I want to prove. I don’t need others to see everything my way.
Unfortunately, wanting peace and getting it are two different matters.
“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone,” St. Paul said.
But a scan of news headlines proves peace doesn’t always depend on us.
If I were living, say, in Israel or Gaza, I might find it impossible to maintain any peace, outer or inner. Terrorists could burst into my kibbutz to murder my family in their beds. The IDF could drop a 2,000-pound bomb that would obliterate not only my home but my entire block.
Major catastrophes, when they come — wars, typhoons or tsunamis — are matters none of us ordinary mortals can do much about.
A farmer in Israel or a shopkeeper in Gaza is caught in somebody else’s crosshairs. I understand that. I pray for those on both sides of that ongoing maelstrom. Praying is about all I can do, feeble as it feels.
Still, for the moment, that’s not the situation we Americans live in.
Certainly, terrible things happen here. Babies are born with severe birth defects. Parents with kids still in grade school are diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Life has always been dangerous for everybody, everywhere. Seemingly random tragedy can afflict any of us and steal our peace in a blink.
But here, cataclysms large and small alike are the exception rather than the rule. Mostly, we get to choose whether we’ll live in peace. Peace, like happiness, is an inside job.
So, because I want peace in my heart if I can’t find it anywhere else, I think a lot about how to create that. I can’t legislate world peace. I can’t press peace on my neighbors or parishioners. But if I can become peaceable enough within myself, maybe that will both help me and others, too.
So, for whatever they’re worth, here are a few ideas for finding peace, based on my observations, experiences and, if nothing else, aspirations:
— Learn humility: Among the few blessings of getting older is how glaringly clear it becomes that we’re not the smartest, fastest or most attractive. Our memory goes, our knees go, our hair goes. This frees us from self-delusions, from trying to compete all the time, from needing to compare ourselves against others. We know we’ve lost the next race before it even begins, so why overly trouble ourselves? We learn to rest.
— Don’t borrow trouble: I’ve wasted much of life fretting about what ifs. What if nuclear war breaks out? What if this lump is malignant? The things that kept me awake rarely turned out to be what ended up flattening me. The things did clobber me I never saw coming. My fretting was for naught. I couldn’t predict what was going to happen, and usually couldn’t have prevented it. So why worry? The future will be what it is. Live in, and enjoy, today.
— Shut up: It’s not necessary to have an opinion on every subject, and if we absolutely must have an opinion it’s not necessary to share it. Most people don’t care what you or I think. Besides, most of what we’re convinced of now will eventually turn out to have been dead wrong. (See humility, above.) Speak less, listen more. When we get worn out listening, we can flip the switch on our hearing aid to “off.” It’s amazing how much peace abides in silence.
— Do something kind: Preferably, do it for someone who can’t repay the favor. Whenever possible, do it anonymously; that way, we won’t be concerned about whether the recipient appreciates it. Nothing distracts us from our troubles as effectively as looking to the hurts of others. By making someone else’s day better, we improve our own day immeasurably.
— Find someone or something to love: If we’re blessed with a partner we love and who loves us, that’s a great advantage. When that’s not doable, there’s still love to be found. We can love a child, a dog, our garden, long-time friends — and, of course, the Lord. Whoever or whatever the object, we must let love operate through us. Love and peace are inseparable.
— Trust God despite the circumstances: This is more easily said than done, I know. Some people seem born with a greater capacity than others to believe. But faith is a source of peace in trouble. To whatever extent we can, we should accept that there’s a God who knows us intimately and cares what happens to us. Whatever difficulty we’re in, we can ask God to walk through it with us. We may be surprised by how real he becomes.
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.