Peace & Love: What it Really Means to Live with an Open Heart

Let me just start this off by saying, I believe in world peace. I have to. I have to believe it’s possible for us to do better, otherwise it becomes impossible for me to carry on.

The pathway to peace eluded me for most of my life, and still does some days. But I’m an investigative person. So I’ve spent a lot of time and energy exploring the possibilities. Let me tell you what I’ve learned (and trust me, I know it’s going to seem hopeless here for a while, but stay with me if you can).

I spent a long time believe social change, and ultimately peace, could come through non-profit, non-governmental, and non-political organizations whose main objective was indeed exactly that: to elicit positive social change. I even spent many years believing this was what I would devote my life to as my work in the world. 

Unfortunately, as I came to investigate further, I came across some very painful truths. The truth that many (if not most) organizations that are intended to provide aid, relief, and positive social change end up actually worsening systems of power, structures of oppression, violence, and disenfranchisement of the very people they are set out to help.

This happens for many reasons. Many of these organizations are actually controlled by those who benefit from the systems of power and oppression that are already in place, and they covertly serve to enhance these agendas on a global scale. Others fall into the trap of good intentions, but are far too large, too hierarchical, and too disconnected from the true lived experiences of those they wish to support, that they unintentionally create more harm than good. If you want to explore this topic further, a book that changed my life (and sent me into years of hopelessness and depression, fair warning) is called “Paved with Good Intentions”.

When I realized the NGO and non-profit sector were essentially hopeless, causing as much if not more harm than governments and corporations, I kept searching. My studies in alternative and mainstream media, social movements, and activism seemed to offer some potential. 

However, upon further investigation, I came to understand that this was also an ineffective road to social change, for many reasons. 

First of all, a lot of classic activism is based on occupying space: taking to the streets, protests, walk outs, etc. The trouble with this is that power is no longer held in physical spaces as it once was. A beautiful illustration of this was the occupy wall street protest, which ultimately had no real impact because wall street is not operating physically on wall street. Everything happens digitally and remotely. So taking over physical location does little to disrupt the flow of power and energy.

This brings us to digital activism. While hacker activism seems to offer a promising solution to this first issue, it is also deeply flawed. The requirements of being a successful hacker require constant education in the technical realm, as does activism in the social and political realm. It’s nearly impossible for an individual to remain highly educated in both, which requires people to team up. It can be done. But the egos, inflated sense of power and influence, and flawed nature of humans tends to get in the way.

Well what about digital and social media forms of protest and spreading awareness? This seems to be what we have all resorted to — but does it actually work? I have my doubts. Here’s why.

Many social media movements are incited by bots and AI, and have the effect of creating further divisiveness between groups. Algorithms are inherently intended to create a silo effect, meaning you will end up in a corner of the internet where you only see perspectives that reinforce your own beliefs. Many shareable graphics and content are intended to further perpetuate this divide, and ultimately leave people feeling a greater sense of self-righteousness. 

Social media movements also create a false perception of “doing good” or having “participated” in social change, when in fact, sitting at home on your phone and sharing a post to your story does not in fact create any change in the real world. People receive a sense of validation from taking such actions and feel they have “done their part”, therefore further disassociating from the true lived reality of suffering by numbing their very natural and human experience of guilt, sadness, pain, and helplessness.

Instead of sitting with these complex emotions, social media movements provide an easy escape route: share and move on with your day. 

On a more insidious level, these movements are deeply troubling in the way they provide an easy outlet to perpetuate hate, fear, anger and pain. People begin pointing fingers on the internet. “Those people are bad because they HAVEN’T posted about it”… the violence is playing out between strangers staring at a screen, looking for the bad guy.

It’s easier to target strangers online from a self-righteous place than to sit with the pain that comes up from witnessing a crisis.

It’s easier to point fingers than to sit with the part of you that inflicts pain and hurt on others when you feel hurt. It’s easier than looking at the part of you (the part of all of us) that wants to get revenge, make someone pay, or put others through suffering when we are suffering.

And yet, that is what peace really requires of us.

We won’t find peace by putting big organizations in charge of fixing it. We won’t find it through fighting back against injustice and taking to the streets. We won’t find it from behind our screens. 

We find peace when we are willing to look, to feel, and to face the horrible pain of this world. And we choose to not pass it on any more.

We find peace when we sit with the deeply uncomfortable truth that we all have a part of us that wants to make someone or something else hurt when we feel we’ve been wronged. When we recognize that impulse, the impulse at the root of all war, within ourselves… we can begin to shift.

When we see the anger that is sparked by someone cutting us off in traffic, and instead of throwing that anger on the next person we encounter by being short and impatient with the cashier, we choose to sit in the pain. 

When we feel hurt by something a loved one says or does, and instead of punishing them and withholding love, we soften and open to be with the discomfort of that pain.

When we see injustice in the world and instead of looking for an enemy, and finding anyone we can to hold the fault, we sit in the deep discomfort of the truth that there is so much that is unfair in the world.

We feel pain, anger, hostility and violence being thrown at us, and instead of throwing it back or fighting it, we just say “wow that is so deeply painful”. 

We choose that “never again” doesn’t mean “never again will I let myself get hurt, so I will attack first in order to defend my heart”. We choose that “never again” means we feel how painful it is to receive hurt, and we choose to never inflict that same pain on someone else.

We end the cycle.

We feel it. And we let it move through us. Without making anyone else pay. We alchemize it. We all have this power, it is the profound and inherent power of the human heart. And we can practice it in any moment. 

I do believe in world peace. I don’t believe we will ever find it if we do not first find peace within ourselves, our intimate relations, our families, and our communities. 

Peace starts with you.

It starts by choosing to feel pain, sadness, anger, grief. It starts when you stop making anyone else responsible for those feelings, and you simply feel them.

Peace starts when you uproot the places within you that are always looking for a bad guy. When you notice the tiny moments of hurt and injustice in your life and you choose to not make anyone else to blame.

It starts when you find the willingness to observe this very human tendency to protect yourself, and instead, you lay your armour down. 

Peace begins with getting in touch with the human heart, all the way.

It is no longer fighting. It is finding the pain beneath the anger, and just letting that pain open you further.

When we can experience pain, hurt, and injustice without feeling we have the right to make someone hurt for it, we are ending a cycle of trauma, karma, and suffering.

This is not a spiritual concept, nor does it have anything to do with bypassing. It is about fully experiencing the inherent pain of this humanness, and deciding it is no one’s fault. It is gently opening the heart to feel it, and deciding to be fully responsible in the process. It is not blaming yourself, nor shaming, but simply recognizing the truth: there is pain.

And instead of playing hot potato with the pain, we choose to hold it.

In that space, the pain can shift into something else, something like love. We begin to plant new seeds. Seeds of peace.