The Price of Peace

November 20, 2009

People are always telling me to “do something.” They never say what, exactly, and they never say why, only that it I positively imperative that I “do something.” What with, precisely? With my life, with my day? It’s never certain.

It is Friday night and I am sitting alone in my living room drinking a cup of black tea, one creamer, three spoons of sugar, listening to my brother arguing with my parents upstairs and wishing I were anywhere but here.

I have 48 pages left in the book I am reading and little to no desire to finish it anytime soon. All I really want right now is to be with my best friend ignoring the World.

All day long it seems as though all I hear about is money, money, money and how the President is a socialist and how the World is going to end and how it’s all going to Hell in a hand basket. And what if it is? It was bound to happen sooner or later. It is all so vastly important to the middle-class society people that I know to be throwing themselves into a pit of worry and misery over things which are both nothing and everything. Why work yourself up into a frenzied despair over things which are going to end anyway?

Lately I’ve taken to watching foreign films and listening to music in other languages. I believe I may rather hear things I do not understand and yet somehow the meaning transcends language. Words are irrelevant. I would rather sit in a room with someone I care for and not say a word than to talk to hours to someone who is incidentally a part of my life.

Most People are incidentally a part of my life. It may seem brash and rather ungrateful to say that I don’t really like most of my friends, but I’m afraid it has been becoming a theme of my life. Yes, I would rather sit alone on a Friday night than to go out with most of the people I know. Knowing someone does not make them my friend and seeing them does not, either. What makes someone my friend is someone in whom I confide, and who confides in me. Desires, frustrations, how work was, what’s going on with the family, I had chicken for dinner, etc. These are very few and far between. And in fact, several of them disappear. People who once were very good friends now never answer. Some of them I never call in the first place.

People tell me to do something with my life. And I do not understand what they mean. I am doing something with my life. It may not be what they consider to have merit and be of any worth, but I enjoy it. The problem with this existence lies not with me, but with everyone else. The reason I must “do something” is to stay their words. I tire of hearing their persistent asking and nagging. I have no interest in this World they say I must participate so much in. It is full of People exactly like them, all worrying and despairing over things I do not understand. I do not see the importance of a degree, of insurance, of making money and “something of your life.” Who are you to determine that I am not? Things like degrees and health insurance are a part of the Modern World. I resent the Modern World with great fervency. Before the advent of such things, one could become a lawyer without ever attending a law class. They could simply have the drive to educate themselves, a task which I severely doubt many Modern People would ever attempt. If you became sick, you either got well or you died. No great hardship to die. It was a part of life. In this Modern World, dying is a mortal calamity of great proportions. ‘You are not afraid to die? What is wrong with you? Do you not value your life, you fool?’

Yes, of course I do. But I value living while I am alive a great deal more than being dead from the neck up and then dying from the neck down a good deal later. My idea of living does not lie in a 9-5 or in midnight movie premieres or in doing nothing with my unfriends. I do not remember or care to remember anything about those beyond their mere existence at some point. Living was it always being sunny at my Uncle’s house and it always raining when I was 11 and everything being miserable and hating and loving everyone at the same time when I was 13. Seeing an abandoned woodshed from the car window and thinking, “This. This is what it means to be alive: to be here now, at this very moment, in order to see this.” And what was the great purpose in seeing a woodshed from the car window? Nothing, I suppose, besides that great feeling of peace inside.

Not peace, as in the absence of war, but peace: “freedom from fears, agitating passions, moral conflict;” knowing that things are right in my soul. I am right with God, and nothing else matters. Someone I know once said that “the price of peace is peace, because those who long for peace won’t know what to do with it when they get it,” and I suppose that is very true. People, as much as they say they “just want peace,” thrive off of going back and forth over the bills and the government and the rain and the sun and the price of gasoline and their Human Emotions. ‘And if there were no ups and downs,’ they say, ‘well, what would be the fun in that?’ They fail to realize the great true pleasure of being sure that though things may change, and invariably will, some thing remain the same. The sun will continue to rise and set, actions will still speak louder than words, and God is still good.

I crave peace.

But rather than peace, I have a consistent dripping into my soul that I am not accomplishing anything, that I am not doing anything “worthwhile” and that I could “do so much more” by so many People’s words. Some who’s opinion I value and some who’s I do not, but either way it begins to pry itself inside and plant a seed of doubt that then sprouts and stems into frustration. Should I go to school? Should I not? Should I work a dead-end job, purpose unknown, only to come home to nothing and no one? Should I not work, sparing my soul the disappointment of the job but instead granting the bitterness against Humanity that comes from being told one is “not going anywhere?” No, I’m not going anywhere, and I don’t particularly want to. I want to plant solid roots, not uproot and change pots and grow and change again and grow and change again. I once read that “if there were no change there would be no time.” If that is so, then at this particular moment, in this particular room, with this particular cup of tea, I am outside of time.

Time is passing all around me, and I am absent from it. However, I am more in the midst of it than many who are whirling about in it all the time. Being at the standstill of time gives me the opportunity to observe it, to truly begin to understand it. It is always the same. It changes, it passes with every second-onto something new and different-yet it is consistent in its change. One may be sure that tomorrow will indeed come, and then the day after that will as well. Every day throughout the established World, the sun has risen and set, and now in this Modern World we try to control it. If we do not like what time the sun rises and sets, we merely change the time. Forget how God set it in motion; are our wants not more important? How imperious are these Modern People! They set themselves not outside of time, but above it. Complaining of things that are undeniable; ‘Oh, how I wish it would rain, we do so need the rain,’ and then not a day later when it has rained a quarter-inch and the ground is hardly saturated, ‘Oh, I do loathe the rain, I wish it would end already.’ Never satisfied with what has been given, and always wanting more!

And I am guilty, as well. I am so ashamed to say so. I wish I could place myself outside of this Modern World and go on with the sun rising and setting when it will, alternating between sun and rain, warm and cold, as it will and does, and being outside of time, though it is always present. Were that I could remove myself. I have become as Americanized as the next person over. Were that I had not.

Were that I could maintain that peace. For I do have it, from time to time; most People do. But very few succeed in keeping it. They get caught up in paying the rent and the price of milk and dreams of strangling their boss and spouse and children that they lose it. Then when they do they long for it again, but when they do finally get it back, they abuse it and off it goes again, to return maybe never. If one is not satisfied with peace, what is the purpose in having it? The answer is simple: there isn’t. Go on living your high-paced life, letting it go off spinning out of control, trying to tie it down (but not very hard), and then giving up and going inside again and repeating the process. It’s your privilege.

Mine is to hold on to that peace.