Absence of Chaos
What brings you peace?
A lot of things make us feel peaceful. Being around good energy, having wholesome food, a good book, good friends, green fields. It can mean something different to each of us. But what does peace encompass, apart from all of this?
Peace to me encompasses harmony, tranquility, and a state of inner and outer calm where conflicts are resolved through understanding, empathy and cooperation rather than violence. It transcends mere absence of conflict to signify a state of equilibrium and fulfilment. It embodies the alignment of one’s inner self with the external world.
Easy to say. Difficult to do.
Perpetual peace may lead to stagnation or complacency, hindering growth and innovation. Struggles actually catalyze personal development and societal progress.
The dynamic balance between moments of peace and periods of growth and transformation and even conflict is essential for individual and collective evolution. Peace should not be stagnant but rather a foundation from which to navigate life’s ebbs and flows with resilience and wisdom.
In the modern world, finding inner peace is something that many people aim for, but few actually succeed in. We convince ourselves that everyday yoga practice will lead to inner tranquility. Alternatively, if we practice meditation and breathwork before bed, we’ll find inner serenity.
It is not that simple to activate our inner serenity. Some people think that achieving inner serenity requires effort and hard work from the outside. It’s simple to assume that you have attained inner peace if, for instance, you go to bed thinking about what you are grateful for, wake up in a good mood, eat healthily, and spend the day doing activities you love. However, that is not how things really work. Not every day is filled with productive and upbeat thoughts. Even after taking a 30-minute yoga class to start our day, we still run into accidents and hassles that get under our skin. The second you get into your car and out onto the streets again, you are already annoyed with the traffic, irritated with some dude who probably doesn’t know how to follow traffic rules, or swearing at someone who is honking too loud.
We reserve a weekend retreat to help us concentrate ourselves and try to achieve more inner serenity. This restores our sense of tranquility, perhaps for a longer period of time, but eventually life happens, and our inner serenity is disturbed once more. One day, we might be stopped in traffic, or get into a tiff at work and our resentment and irritation will cause the calm we’ve so diligently worked to achieve to be disturbed.
Maybe we should go a step further and enroll ourselves in a spiritual community where they spend their entire day connecting with their inner serenity. However, these communities’ members are also not exempt from internal conflict. Ultimately, that peace which we try so hard to attain will get disrupted and we try so hard to get it back or latch onto it.
So, this is how I see it, different moments encompass different emotions. And if we want to be peaceful all the time, we can’t be sitting in a yoga studio the whole day or trying to meditate. Even the greatest yogi put in a corporate scenario is bound to break over time.
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for achieving inner calm. You might decide to forego taking a spiritual path entirely in favor of trying to live up to social norms in every way possible. Your priorities are to put in a lot of work, pay your bills on time, send your children to college, and retire early. You’re able to travel for the first time in your life, and everything appears perfect. However, perfectionism is equally susceptible to the annoyances of life. You could still lose a loved one, have a medical emergency, or suffer grief even after taking all the necessary precautions.
Looking at all this, I think peace comes with a sense of flow and accepting all these different feelings and emotions that take over through the day. It is not about defining a certain state of mindfulness or thought or thoughtlessness, but to be fluid with your thoughts and embrace the complexities of human emotions. And that state of flow and acceptance is true inner peace.