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Today's
Quotation:
Ultimately,
we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large
areas of
peace
in ourselves, more and more peace, and to
reflect
it towards others. And the more peace there is in us,
the
more peace there will be in our troubled world.
Etty
Hillesum
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Today's
Meditation:
The
peaceful people that I've known in life have been those who
have most affected me in positive ways. I've always
admired the way they accept things that happen without
losing their peace of mind over them--if they decide that
something's bad, they simply resolve to do something about
it, and then they do that something. Their peace
doesn't leave them.
When
peace leaves me, it's usually replaced by frustration or
anger or resentment, but never by anything else that's
healthy and positive for me. My tension level goes up,
and that affects the way I deal with other people, my
health, and my perspective on life. In other words, I
become a person who's not very helpful to other
people. I cannot spread peace and goodwill while peace
is not the dominant aspect of who I am.
I
love Etty's use of the term "reclaim." This
puts the idea of looking for peace in an entirely different
framework, one that makes me think that the peace is already
there, just waiting to be pulled to the surface. And
when I do find peace after periods of tension or
frustration, that's exactly what it feels like--that I've
re-established contact with something that's been inside of
me all along.
Perhaps
my goal should be to keep the door to my inner peace open
all the time, and not to let these other feelings close it
when they want to have control of who I am.
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