Is Peace Attainable?

Peace is an abstract term. It is what we fight for, what we go to war for, what is one man’s ultimate goal in life. ‘To have a peaceful life’. Isn’t as easy as it sounds. Every little thing and big thing happening around us affects us. It makes us question many things regarding ourselves and regarding things completely unrelated to us. 

In today’s life, it is impossible to ignore our surroundings and be completely blind to the world, continue living our daily life as if there’s not a dreadful calamity overhead. Everyday, there’s a huge story break which gives us something to worry about, like the Coronavirus pandemic, the World War 3 scare, the downfall of the global economy, countries crumbling from the inside and other things affecting us and our mental state generally. 

Peace is what we all want, each individual and every country. Ironically, it is peace that we go to war for, with guns blazing, firing and killing. It is peace that we become greedy for, making us hungry for money, love, attention and other materialistic things, thinking that such things would give us peace and bring us the inner calm and happiness we all crave for. 

What is peace? According to dictionaries, it is a freedom from disturbance or, simply put, tranquility. But peace as a state of mind is something which differs for everyone. What peace can’t be is, being free of emotions. Being emotionless will make you carefree and make you not worry about anything, but emotions are what makes us humans. Being blank and toneless might give you a feeling of calm,  but it takes our humaneness from us. That is certainly not peace. You can’t function on basic mechanism like a robot, unfeeling and call it peace. 

Everyone wants peace. Peace is what one does to take a break from the daily fast paced life of one self. ‘Peace’ means something else for each of us, for some it might be taking in nature’s beauty, or paint and dance to music, for some, it may be chilling with their friends, playing video games or just reading in a quiet corner. But is that really peace, or is it just an escape from the real world for a short while?

In this world, in this time period, with so many means and advanced technology keeping us updated about every recent happenings around the world, is it possible to have peace? Trapped in our own mind and this endless circle of one bad thing after another, the only peace that we can attain is within ourselves. Everyone has their own ideologies and beliefs. One man’s peace can be another man’s chaos. We cannot keep chasing our own peace without colliding with someone else’s. 

Peace, for now, sounds like an idea of a Utopian society. Not many have seen it and not many are going to. We cannot define peace for everyone because it's an abstract term, not really known. It is just an idea that we all live for, hoping that one day, we’d have it.