Searching for Peace

I wrote the following tidbit at the end of November 2024. I didn’t add it to my blog at the time because, for starters, I didn’t know if I still wanted a blog, but more importantly, I didn’t know if I’d feel the same way about what I’d written either tomorrow, next week, or next year. But it's now the end of March 2025, and I'm still on the same page, for the most part, so here it is:

I’m going to say something that’s probably going to be unpopular at best and hated at worst. I understand that. I do. I understand that, but I’m going to say it anyway because it needs to be said.

It needs to be said because our world will never find peace until we all understand and believe it. So, I’m going to ask everyone who decides to read this to take a deep breath, to set their ego aside, and then to open their mind and their heart for just a little bit.

Please know that I understand that anger can be healthy. I do. It’s how we make change. But. Yes, there's a but.

But anger can turn toxic, and it can make us believe that someone who has wronged us – whether in our minds or in reality – is bad and deserving of bad things happening to them. Some like to call this karma. I don’t know much about that, and that’s not what this is about, but either way, nobody, no matter what, ever deserves horrific things happening to them.

I realize that not everyone is Christian. Heck, I don’t identify as Christian anymore either, but I do believe in Jesus, and I’m talking about the Jesus who believed in unconditional love for everyone. Compassion for everyone. Grace and mercy for everyone. Understanding for everyone.

I know that those of us who are justice oriented will have a hard time with this concept of unconditional love. I know because I struggled with it myself for years, but it’s important that we understand that to get to world peace, we need to live by the concept of unconditional love. We need to embrace it, believe in it, and follow it with a pure and open heart as consistently as possible.

Everyone, even the most heinous of people, deserve love and compassion. I’m not saying they don’t also deserve to take responsibility for their actions, because they absolutely do. What I’m saying is that we don’t have the right to vilify another human being because we could just as easily have ended up in their shoes had we lived their life in exactly the way they did with exactly the tools they had to live it.

Now, I know that right now you’re saying, “I would never have…” and I’m here to tell you that you would have because we are all one. We are all the same. We are all connected. If you had been born into the same family, into the same environment, and had the same mental and emotional tools, programming, examples, and experiences, and lack of support and resources as the person who did the wrong thing, it could absolutely have been you. It could have been me. It wasn’t, and that’s something we should be grateful for, not something we should brag about or lord over the person who did the wrong thing.

Before we go further, I want to make it clear that I’m not someone who’s all sparkles, rainbows, and sunshine. I’m not someone who’s never had people do bad things to her. I’m not someone who’s never seen cruelty firsthand, whether targeted toward me or someone else close to me. I’m the opposite of that. I’m a middle-aged woman who is “lucky” to still be alive. Throughout my life, from birth until recently, I have had numerous experiences with all sorts of trauma, including physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse. Including rape. Including targeted hate and bigotry. Including “bad luck” or negative life circumstances. Life has not been easy, and at the same time, life has also offered me many moments of love, beauty, compassion, and a relatively good dose of “good luck.”

I tell you this because I want you to know that I’m not coming from a place of not understanding the cruelty or horrors that some people have exacted upon our world, on us, or on our fellow creatures who are sharing this planet. I have firsthand experience with cruelty. I’ve survived it. And yes, I was angry. Heck, I’m still angry sometimes. However, I also understand that, “There but for the Grace of God, go I.” (I don’t remember where that verse is from, but it's something I’ve heard my mom say so many, MANY, times, and it fits here. In fact, it’s hugely relevant.)

Part of the healing work I’ve had to do to heal my mind from the successive traumas that have plagued me from birth is to go back and look at them, study them, and then try to heal the part of me that was there for the experience. I had to ask myself what that version of me needed and whether I could meet those needs now. It also included me stepping into the shoes of those who hurt me and trying to understand how they could have done the things they did.

At first, my anger was too strong for me to even consider doing this and I was quite adamant that, no matter what, I would never have done what they did. It took DECADES for me to quiet my ego, and my pain, enough to consider what I would have been like if I had been in their exact circumstances. What would I have done if I were them? If I had the same memories, experiences, and programming as them. Is it possible that I would have tripped down the same path?

Yes, absolutely.

When I was 100 per cent honest with myself, I could see it. I could see it and I didn’t like it, not one bit. Why would I? Nobody would choose to become "bad," right? Seriously, how many children do you know who would say they want to be a villain or someone who hurts others when they grow up? None that I've ever met. We aren't born mean or cold-hearted. We're programmed by the people and events in our lives from the first breath we take after leaving our mother's womb. For good or for bad, life shapes us.

Now, all I can say is that I’m grateful it was them and not me. I'm grateful that the combination of life events I've faced allowed room for me to retain my compassion and my ability to love and be kind.

It’s easy to judge other people’s actions based on our own experiences, but it isn’t fair, and it isn’t accurate.

... and now we're back to March 30, 2025.

My thoughts, my emotions, my beliefs… they’re a bit all over the place, and they have been for quite some time. (With an added uptick in feelings of discombobulation rising in late January and getting higher exponentially ever since.)

I go from wanting to see some of the most despicable of today’s tyrants tarred and feathered to wanting to find a way to infect everyone, even the baddies, with the peace bug. (We need those with greed and hate in their hearts to relax their ego’s hold on their thinking and feeling centres long enough for a little love and a little light to seep in… enough to annihilate that greed and hate, and replace it with generosity and love, wrapped in kindness, hope, and understanding.)

I believe that we all need to be questioning ourselves, our viewpoints, our perspectives… maybe if we could all find a way to see from the other person’s perspective, even for a moment, even if it makes our stomach turn, maybe we might plant some seeds for the peace we all need and deserve.