When I was the Acting Director for The People For Peace Foundation in California during the 1980s, we did a study of the root causes of war and peace within an individual as well as society. We determined that peace is not a static love and light state, but a dynamic process that involves conflict. We found that there is a point in the process where conflict either leads to a greater degree of understanding and tangible peace, or deteriorates into further misunderstanding and in its extreme, war.
We were looking for the root causes of the state of peace and war within an individual as well as a society and the world. One of the people I interviewed in our process was a negotiator who mentioned that you always have to go to a point upon which you can agree. Sometimes it is the most basic and primal point such as an agreement that I am human and you are human. Hard as it seems, that is at times the only point upon which agreement is found. Yet it is an opening. That piece of information has always stayed with me and reminded me to keep going to the place where I can find agreement within myself or with another.
And within ourselves when we are in a conflicted state, it is equally important to find a place that we can use as a point of agreement between the warring part of ourselves and the part that longs for peace. In the study we did, it was found that peace is certainly not the absence of war. It is the dynamic process of growing and questioning, and the willingness to confront the hard issues...not a love and light statement that often masks underlying tension and resentment we really feel.
When we pick up the gauntlet of tension and work with it, not against or in denial, we find some powerful possibilities in that raw honesty. Just as we find in successful relationships, peace is not based on passive reaction or giving in to keep the peace.
Real peace is achieved through dynamic interchange and willingness to honor differences, to air them, and the strength and bonding that comes when we surmount the bumps in the road together.