When I Was a Little Girl

When I was a little girl, I thought that wars among nations were a thing of the past. I lived in this fantasy world where resolving conflict through destruction was something we did when we did not know any better and had not yet evolved where we could use diplomacy to resolve our disputes. In my naivete, I believed that world leaders were extraordinary humans who existed to create abundance and peace for their people and all of humanity.

That is the world children live in, a world of fantasy they create for themselves, with the intuitive knowledge that they cannot count on adults to provide. As a result, children are happy and spontaneous. They reach out to each other to invite others to share in their make-believe world, to play out the scenarios that their unencumbered and unbridled imagination constantly rolls out, irrespective of their differences. Children believe and act in goodness. And short of someone breaking their trust and innocence, they go on living in a world of make-believe, a world of goodness and kindness. 

I say all of this because if we, as adults, would carry that spark of fantasy and goodness within us, we might turn the children’s make-believe world into reality. That seems to be the challenge nowadays. Can we manage to visualize a world of peace and kindness long enough to manifest it? 

We are emerging from the uncertainties and harsh realities of a pandemic and the social unrest that has rocked our world for two years. We seem to have forgotten that at one point, we recommitted to achieving our higher ideals to treat everyone with respect, love, and dignity. And we are at it again. We, humans, started another war, and we are once again witnesses to the destruction of communities, families, and countries. Engaging in war activities destroys the physical world and endangers the very fabric of our humanity. The images of war bring us photos of the cruelty imposed on entire populations and their impacts on the innocence of children affected by the undoing of all they know to be decent, regular, and nurturing. The same children, who, tomorrow, will be the adults bent on using violence to “right the wrongs” that victimized them. And we start the cycle of violence and destruction all over again. 

Meanwhile, we witnessed the war victims succumbing to the temptation and environment of violence and inflicting similar treatments on “others.” We saw men, women, and children of “another race” falling victims to the victims of the war. And we start the cycle of violence and destruction all over again. 

I am not blaming but simply trying to remind us of our higher selves. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes, and I am paraphrasing, we are the perpetrators, we are the victims, representatives of both sides of the coin. What will eventually take precedence and dominate is the side of the coin we choose to cultivate in our lives. To again use one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s imageries, the lotus flower is gorgeous, but underneath the water lays the filthy and putrid mud that the plant draws from and transforms to gift us with a magnificent flower, a symbol of peace and beauty everywhere. According to Thich Nhat Hanh, we are both the lotus flower and the mud. 

The mud is our inner demons. All the voices and chatters that we listened to growing up are imprinted on our psyches. It is all the messages of not being good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, rich enough, educated enough, gifted enough that we have internalized and try to make up for by thinking that we are better than “others.” It is the need to feel like we have to have one up on someone else to justify our worth because we do not believe that we have worth on our own, but only when we compare ourselves to “others.” This feeling of inadequacy and hurt causes us to hurt “others” for short-lived satisfaction and the feeding of the ego. We perpetuate the cycle of violence and destruction done to us to spread to families, communities, cities, villages, countries, and the world, for we are “others.”  

I compare the lotus flower with the feeling of inner peace, love, and joy that we work hard to achieve. When we do, this feeling within drives us to a life of purpose and service. When we feed and are driven by purpose, we will uplift “others.” The nurturing of the soul (starting with an embrace of spiritual practices, connecting with positive people, lectures of uplifting books, time in nature, maintenance of insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and the practice of physical exercise and healthy eating) is a necessary ingredient to the mud’s transmutation into a lotus flower. When each of us achieves inner peace and lives with joy and purpose, it will spread to families, communities, cities, villages, states, countries, and ultimately the world. We finally break the cycle of violence and destruction and create the right conditions for heaven on earth. 

While not an easy feat, let’s try not to focus on the state of the world today and add to the anxiety and anguish that already abound. Let’s commit instead to working on achieving inner peace and treating each other with love, dignity, and respect. Achieving personal inner peace and breaking the cycle of violence within ourselves, our families, and our communities will create the level of consciousness needed to break the cycle of world violence and destruction. 

No inner war is the first step towards no world wars, and reaching inner peace will lead us to achieve world peace. 

Then the world’s children will have shared with us the ability to manifest a new reality that has nothing to envy their world of fantasy.