Peace, It's an Inside Job

I haven’t watched the evening, morning or any other news in years and yet, I am still bombarded by images and videos of violence against different races, religions, different beliefs and I wonder… where is the love?

When we blame and point fingers at others, we are keeping ourselves on the same hamster wheel we’ve been running on. When has violence EVER created Peace?

Violence only creates more violence. One person is injured through the anger of another and it begins this perpetual cycle…. whole generations grow up believing that a group of people are “bad”; this group is labeled “terrorists” and they must die…

One of my favorite Albert Einstein quotes is, ” we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” We cannot come from violence to create peace. We cannot come from hate to create love. We will never feel compassion for someone we continue to believe we hate, someone who deserves our revenge.

We must spend the time to heal ourselves and to realize that we are all innocent at our cores, we are simply believing a thought. And the best part, thoughts can be changed.

I was molested as a young girl, gang raped as a teen and held up by gun point by the time I was 18. Pretty intense violence, right? It took me a minute, but I do not carry any of those things with me any more. I do not harbor resentment or anger for any of those people who “harmed” me. I did, I felt anger, shame…rage. How dare they do this to me. How dare they “victimize” me. Instead I feel compassion for them, even love.

As I began to heal, I began to realize that the people who “harmed” me, were in just as much pain as I was. I remember sitting in a training meeting about working with children of sexual abuse and how to spot it. I could feel the rage coming from one of my colleagues and at one point she couldn’t take it any longer and shared, “I think all child molesters should be killed for what they do to children…”

I could feel myself disagreeing with her wholeheartedly, wait a minute, they are human. Something must have happened to them in order for them to feel that this was the way to handle a situation. Like the guy who put a gun to my head and made me give him my mother’s ring after I begged to keep it for sentimental reasons. What must have been going through his head to believe that he needed that ring more than I? What must the molester believe in order for them to perform such heinous acts?

Do you ever look at the things you tell yourself about yourself and others? Have you ever noticed how much we beat ourselves up for perceived mistakes? Have you ever noticed how much you judge another by some arbitrary marker of “good and evil”?

Violence is not just physical. Violence starts with a thought. If we want to truly change this world, (I know it’s cliché, but clichés are clichés because there is truth.) we must start with ourselves… our thinking.

Bottom line….We all deserve to be here on this planet, because we are HERE. No one is more or less worthy of LOVE and respect. It is time that we learn to accept each other just as we are and allow the love to radiate out to all. You are worthy, I am, we all are.