Everyday peace

Alright, I have to switch gears a little and post a little something more personal.  I'm 3/4 of the way through the 2nd book of memoirs but a few things happened this week  that I found more meaningful.

So, my friend and I exchange books and internet articles a lot. Recently, I got one about a marine's decision to become a CO and his experience. It was a great article. On that same webpage, I came across another article by an anthropologist trying to figure out how to study particularly peaceful communities. How do you measure a peaceful community? The article had some excellent points. Here is a link http://aeon.co/magazine/society/margaret-paxson-peace-conflict/?fb_ref=Default. The article got me thinking that this peaceful lifestyle that many of these COs have described is a day to day practice. How do you change your thinking about everyday conflict or perceptions that we routinely have?

The same weekend, I read that article, I was hiking with my husband and we got into a discussion about categorizing people. For instance, if you are driving around and see someone on the side of the road, we tend to immediately categorize people based on a number of things; what clothes they wear, how they walk, their age, their skin color etc.  Admittedly, I do this all the time. For instance, I saw a guy in a pair of khaki pants and deck shoes waiting for his car to be detailed and I immediately made a judgement about how much money he must make. My husband's point was that it was human nature to do this and if we put the person in the correct category based on a multitude of observations, then its valid, not necessarily right or wrong; similar to putting several dark cloud observations into the category of storm clouds. I acknowledge that this is a byproduct of evolution.  I grew to feel really uncomfortable talking about it. His point was that there isn't anything inherently "good" or "bad" about categories. They are just ways that we lump data together to try to piece together the world around us. I think my uncomfortable feeling stemmed from all the baggage that may come with those categories.

My other thought was that love and connection can be stronger than all that baggage.  So, if  I take an objective perspective,  instead of instantly identifying people as "other" or apart from me, I should try to think of things that I may share. The article brought up the fact that communities that tend to show the most resilience to conflict are those in which there is a mix of different categories of people, different socio-economic classes etc.  The point was that people will find common ground where there was once an "us" and "them."

My goal for myself is to look at the guy with the khaki shorts and think, "Look, that guy likes shorts. I like shorts or I wonder if he doesn't like socks as much as I don't like socks since he's wearing deck shoes". We'll see if the brain-training helps me to feel more peaceful day to day. I'll keep you posted :)