Peace

I have recently begun reading a truly remarkable book... Einstein on Peace. I’m finding it deeply moving, because it speaks so specifically to an issue that is plauging me: the realization that it is very difficult for the life of one who works for peace to be peaceful.

This quote from Einstein betrays the deep sadness and sense of brokenness that a person of sensitivity inevitably feels when trying to take stock of the world:

"The international catastrophe has imposed a heavy burden upon me as an internationalist. In living through this 'great epoch,' it is difficult to reconcile oneself to the fact that one belongs to that idiotic, rotten species which boasts of its freedom of will. How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will! In such a place even I should be an ardent patriot."

It's one of the obnoxious facts of life that there is no such place...no "Garden Enclosed", and that there is no "opting out" of the human race, and the world as it is, at least not without doing violence to your sense of perception. I'm thinking of two quotes, both of which I have found at times to be contradictorily true.

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.”
- Anatole France

And:

"There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

This brings me to the crux of a problem that’s boggled me since my first faint inklings of heaven and hell. How can I be happy while there is suffering? The Buddhist answer of detachment didn’t satisfy me, I couldn’t grasp it, how to achieve it in this life. The question was, and remains, since there is no such island, how to you remain fully engaged in the reality of life, and in the struggle to better the world we’re in, without simply dissolving under the weight of sadness and suffering, and worse, selfishness and disaffectation that surrounds us?

Thinking about this in the new light I’ve received, the partial answer, at least, is one I find disturbing in its banality: moderation. Blah! It becomes a matter of not outrunning the spirit, not trying to make use of gifts we might not yet possess to change problems that are beyond the reach of our ability to affect.

I’m a natural-born heroine, and like all of my kind, believe I’m here to fix the world. No one can deny it needs fixing, and fast. I have always taken my identity largely from this grandiose bit of drama. I’m the passionate one with big dreams and plans, enthusastic, extravagant, foolhardy, brave, brilliant, dauntless, all but annointed the saviour of humanity. If not humanity, my country. If not my country, my meeting. If not my meeting, my family. Coming to terms with the fact that just getting up and facing the petty responsiblities of the day can take all the courage and generosity I posess, or maybe more, is pretty humbling. Also a bit scary. Also a bit sad. But I’m realizing that maybe living my life in a fever of Miss America dreams for a single-handed Change the World campaign is actually a bit selfish, completely inefficient, and in the end, leaves me anything but a heroine. In fact, it generally leaves me pouting and snivelling all over this blog.

There are several things that make it hard to come down to any sort of realism. For one, if I aim for the moon and miss, nobody’s going to blame me. They’ll probably pat me on the back and buy me flowers for trying. But what if I’m just aiming for a humble, simple, honest daily life where I try and fulfil the responsibilities in front of me? What if I miss that? What then?

There is also the very real fear that “coming down to earth” will make a pedestrian, mindless zombie of complacency of me. I don’t want to go through life “just doin’ my bit” and thinking my responsibilities go no farther, never challenging myself, or attempting something big and difficult. That cow-like contentment, just going through the motions, never rocking the boat – that sort of false security will never work for me. I find myself pondering how thin the lines might be between consideration and cowardice, discernment and denial.

There is a Peter Pan in me that thinks “accepting limits” is for losers. That growing up means giving up. Isn't there supposed to something noble and adorable about that sweet courageous fool who keeps attempting the impossible and getting beaten down? So what if tilting at windmills leaves you dead in the end?

If I say that I cannot fix the world, and use it as an excuse to withdraw, well then, yes, that’s worse than my current floundering bombast. But my current pattern of expecting the impossible is threatening to make me worse than useless. Is there a realism that doesn’t smack of defeatism?

I think of Ionesco, again…

“Realism, whether it be socialist or not, falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.”

I know I need to find a way to unite my dreams and visions of what my family, meeting, country, and world can be to a calm, reasoned, responsible routine of faithfulness. There must be a way to focus my efforts without reducing my drive. I can’t deny my nature, but what makes me think I can save the world when I can’t even pay my phone bill on time, or keep my temper? What is really driving all my indignation and raving about the state of the Society? If I was coming from a humble, quiet place, would I be upset, or would I respond with the love and wisdom that I’d fostered by just getting up and making my bed every day? How much energy am I wasting on emotionalism and dramatic thrashings about and wailings over the state of things?

These are certainly not new or novel thoughts, as can be seen by the fact that I am at no loss for quotes on the subject. (I’m never at a loss for quotes, see, here’s a quote defending my persistant use of quotes…Emerson said “The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more." Ha.) But they are revolutionary, applied to my life. The challenge of living quietly, of becoming less dependent on expressing myself in Important Capitalizations and italics at all times, of becoming (barf!) slow and steady, seems somehow more daunting that foaming at the mouth over the last miserable thing Anne Coulter said, or crying myself to sleep about Tsunami victims, or staying up all night worrying about how the last Business meeting went. It would mean changing at a deep and maybe painful level. It would be a conversion of huge dimensions. It would mean going beyond soarings of the spirit and wallowings in the depths of despair. It would mean growing up, for real.