Peace?

After the shootings last Saturday, I wrote a blog suggesting that rather than getting angry, taking sides, and placing blame, members of our generation should make an effort to step back and become vocal advocates for peace and understanding. I was pleased to hear the president echo similar sentiment in his speech in Tucson tonight.

People throw the word peace around in irresponsible ways. There are the people who preach that peace will come to the world when everyone believes in the exact same things (usually the things the ‘peacemaker’ happens to believe). There’s also this hippie notion of a peaceful world where no one ever disagrees, where people hold hands singing folk songs under an eternal rainbow. Blech.

I think a person can be an advocate of peace and still enjoy a good argument. One just has to accept the fact that we’re not all the same, and never will be. We each come from a different background, and because of this, we will always disagree about something. Everyone has been raised differently, hurt differently, gone through hardships differently, and come into our own in a slightly different way. We’ve all been shaped by similar forces, but we're not the same, and our world is better, more colorful, and more interesting because of that. The moment we realize this, we start to have more meaningful arguments, the kind that lead to progress and understanding, rather than violence and hurt.

Let's argue it out. Let's debate, and listen to each other. Let's take the time to get worked up until we laugh about it, or cry about it, or go our separate ways to cool off before we get together again. As long as we realize that we're all neighbors; we're all in this together for whatever time the forces of life grant us. That is the kind of peace I’d like to see for us. Not a boring, utopian ‘garden-of-eden’ peace where nothing ever happens. I’m talking about a gritty, messy, twenty-first century kind of peace. The the kind our country was founded on. The kind that works.