Achieving Peace of Mind

Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg As I write this on the eve of Christmas Day, 2007, I am reminded that peace across our globe is the most universal wish of humankind. That peace is where people don't kill each other. It's also where we don't harm each other, either physically or emotionally. Where we don't take advantage of each other so that one suffers while the other prospers. Where a few people don't suffer severely and in obscurity because of the unfortunate circumstance of their birth or fate that befell them while they struggled to make decent lives for themselves. That kind of peace is not peace of mind. While studies show that there are fewer wars going on in the world today than ever before in history--a step toward our universal objective of peace--peace of mind remains elusive in the world, perhaps more so than ever before. Our ancient prehistorical ancestors were animals. We retain many traits common to animals, particularly to mammals, the group to which we belong. For the most part, mammals live treacherous lives, their very existence at risk every day from predators or disease. We humans, once the prey, adapted ourselves abundantly well to our new position as predators. We still retain some natural primal feeling to show others that we can kill, that we can fulfill our roles as hunters. The progress of civilization may be marked by our further adaptation to the fact that we no longer need to kill as hunters or in defence of ourselves as prey. Some still have not made that change, but most have. That says nothing about peace of mind. Why do we have less of it today than ever before? We have transposed our need to show our superiority among our kind by brute force and violence to a need to demonstrate our superiority over the emotions of others. We do that by fear. We who live in potentially the most calm and tranquil environments in history destroy that potential by imposing fear on others. Or by accepting fear on ourselves. For example, while more Americans die by the hands of fellow Americans every few months than died in the tragedy of 9/11, US citizens live in fear that some rogue terrorist will break through the extensive systems of protection offered by their government and kill them or their family with a bomb or biological weapon. Fear, self imposed, self accepted. And, like most fear, irrational. Peace of mind comes not by avoiding having their own opinions, as Lichtenberg suggested, because that way people accept the opinions of others without due consideration or diligence. It comes by not fearing the opinions of others. Sticks and stones may break our bones, as the old saying goes, but "names" and the

threatening opinions of others can only hurt us if we allow them to do so. Somewhere we have been taught to value the threatening opinions of others. That mindless acceptance of unlikely possibilities--or remaining close to those who express them--we do to ourselves. It's not necessary. Since it would be hard to prove where each of us learns how and what to fear in our lives, let's bypass that and teach children that they have little to fear. They must be cautious, something that is built into us in the form of natural apprehension, and they must not do risky things that hold a high probability of causing them harm. We can teach children that they have no need to fear beyond that. At the same time, we must teach children how to exercise their minds positively so that they don't adopt the aggressive "No fear!" philosophy that some people hold today. Peace of mind must no be just an objective, like a plateau that we can reach. Peace of mind is a way of life, like a garment we can wear as we go about our lives doing other things to benefit ourselves and others. From a psychological perspective, peace of mind comes from construction, not from destruction. We can teach that. If we want peace of mind to become reality, we must teach it because it doesn't happen by itself. Left to our own devices, we allow ourselves to be preyed upon by people who want to dominate our minds, who want to find our heads with their opinions so that we don't have to produce any of our own. Childhood is the only effective and cost-free time of life to teach such lessons. Fixing adults is time consuming and very costly. Bill Allin Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children the lessons they need before they face problems they aren't prepared for as adults. Learn more at http://billallin.com