Love & Peace — Part Two

As I look more closely at our world, I begin by asking a quieter question:

How am I seeing it through my own eyes?

The world is not only what it is.

It is how we learn to see it.

Difference is not the threat.

Competition is.

Harshness does not always grow.

Sometimes sight simply dims.

Separation shapes the future faster than conflict.

A society that forgets how to unite

forgets how to sustain itself.

Hope rarely disappears.

It becomes difficult to recognize.

With honesty, I notice how much is missed within society—not always for lack of intelligence, but for lack of intention. We are quick to point out our differences in ways that create comparison and competitiveness, rather than curiosity. And yet, difference itself is not the problem. It is how we are taught to hold it.

I wonder whether harshness is growing from generation to generation, or whether our eyes have simply dimmed—less able to recognize the good that exists alongside our differences. When separation is encouraged over unity, we begin to shape a future that moves further away from the structures that once sustained humanity—structures where hope was not abstract, but visible, even if distant.

The world carries pain.

Anger is often its language.

When we pray for mercy,

we are asking for safety.

Nothing weighs heavier

than fearing for our children.

I hear the cries beneath the noise. I sense the suddenness of fear in many hearts—for what feels lost, stolen, or no longer protected. The pain in the world is undeniable, as is the anger that rises from it. And so we pray for mercy.

But I pause and ask: What is the mercy we are truly asking for?

Is it mercy that allows us to trust that our children are safe during their school days?

This thought rests heavily on my heart. I struggle to understand how such fear can be humanly accepted, or how hearts might change enough to soften it.

Perhaps our perception of love and peace has been interrupted—not only by what is real and visible, but by what may be distorted. If manipulation of reality exists, if fear is amplified through repetition, then it shapes behavior in ways that feel almost instinctual—monkey see, monkey do.

Love and peace are not gone.

They have been interrupted.

Repetition shapes belief.

Fear spreads faster than truth.

Refusing victimhood begins

with refusing distortion.

Compassion requires vision.

Judgment requires none.

If this is so, could we, even briefly, refuse to remain victims of what is placed before our eyes?

How might we learn to look past what merely appears to be, and return to the goodness that still exists within us? Can we choose compassion over judgment, even when judgment feels justified? Can we carry peace beyond the walls of our own homes—onto the roads, into crowded stores, into moments where impatience has become the norm?

What if our own thoughts were held more carefully, with intention?

What if we wished kindness where none was expected—not as a transaction, but as a stance?

Many would call this naïve. Some would say it is the act of wearing blinders.

But consider this: one shift in perception—just one—can alter more than we realize.

Perhaps the quiet work before us is not to fix the world as it is presented,

but to become what feels missing from it.

And in doing so, to remember that love and peace were never meant to be demanded—

only lived.

Peace does not stay indoors.

It travels with us.

What we think quietly

becomes what we live publicly.

Kindness is not naïve.

It is deliberate.

One shift in perception

can alter more than noise ever could.

The world changes most

when someone becomes

what feels missing.