ON PEACE AND TRANQUILITY
For most of my life I have been searching for ‘peace’. I have tried to find ways to avoid conflicts – in both my personal and professional lives – but I failed, and failed, and failed again.
Then I stumbled upon a book by Will Durant, written in 1926, called The Story of Philosophy.
In this book, I have found some history, some context and some wisdom that helped me understand the circumstances in which human desires for peace, and the reasons why we pursue it, generally land the human race in paths of seeking pleasure, that are usually self-destructive.
The root, according to the recorded history of philosophy, theology and culture, starts from the journey that Alexander the Great undertook from Greece to Asia in his quest for conquering the world and spreading Greek religion, culture and trade into the orient, mostly all countries located in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
Funnily, when I tried to find the history of humanity’s pursuit for peace and tranquillity, I landed up mostly in eras which were post-conflict that saw humans trying to make sense of life, even when they were in a state of enslavement, such as when Greek and Roman empires fell and the ways people suffered under the rule of tyrants and cruel armies.
I always found superstitious rituals unnecessary and time wasting. However, after going through what happened when Alexander tried to push Greek thought into Asia, a reverse flood of oriental rituals and cults entered Europe, and some Europeans somehow started to find peace and tranquillity in the oriental practices of religion and ritual.
Quoting some very powerful lines by different thinkers may shed some light on the subject of searching for peace.
As Schopenhauer deemed it useless for the individual will to fight the universal will, so the Stoics argued that philosophical indifference was the only reasonable attitude to a life in which the struggle for existence is unfairly doomed to inevitable defeat. If victory is quite impossible it should be scorned. The secret of peace is not to make an achievement equal to our desires, but to lower our desires to the level of our achievements.
Seneca (65AD) said, “If what you have seems insufficient to you, then though you may possess the world, you will yet be miserable”.
Books after books, in the form of poetry, prose, essays, and theories upon theories lie buried in the shelves of libraries and archives on the subject of searching for peace and tranquillity. I have just realized how foolish it is to waste readers’ time on throwing some light on this over-written, and widely discussed topic, regarding both its visible and invisible aspects.
However, the simple law of attraction confirms that if you desire and pray for well-deserved peace and pleasure, it will come to you. Better choose smartly, otherwise you will land up accumulating debts and physical and habitual abnormalities, instead of peace.
Keep working and praying for them, and someday you will find them touching your soul as occasionally as one feels the whiff of fresh fragranced air that comes from the earth after the rainfall has stopped. One small happiness and moment of peace equals millions of tears shed and pains suffered in this mysterious yet fruitful existence. What an unfair proportion.
By John Kingz
