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All Peace Is Personal
by Anne Rawley Saldich, PhD.
What would you think of having a new national holiday, not to celebrate or commemorate, not
to give thanks or get gifts, but to actually make peace?
My inspiration for this idea comes from a popular song in which there is a profound wish:
"Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me." If not with me, and you, how can it
begin in Kosovo or Colorado?
Here's how it would work. You and I get our congressional representatives to vote for a new
holiday called Peace Day and the rest is up to us. On that day we'll get in touch with anyone
we're mad at, annoyed with, estranged from and ask forgiveness even though it's not our fault,
which it never is.
This will be a lot harder than shuddering when we learn about ethnic cleansing in Kosovo,
bombing civilians in Serbia, or child-killers in Littleton. Yes, it will be a lot harder
because it's personal. But, to rephrase Tip O'Neill, all peace is personal.
There's no way around it. We can clean up the miserable messes we made, or someone made, in
our family relationships; we can reconnect with friends who've been put on hold because one of
us spoke out of turn; we can bridge the gap at the office; we can offer a palm branch to our
impossible children who, by the way, think we are impossible parents; or, we can continue to
intellectualize over dinner about Kosovo and Colorado and do nothing afterwards except load
the dishwasher.
That's not enough. We may not be able to stop the war and the ethnic cleansing or bring
Littleton's dead back to life but we can make peace in our own small worlds.
My belief that we should do so has had a long gestation not because I'm a slow learner but
because I'm from a culture that gives so much room to acclamation, consternation and
demonstration that action gets lost in the shuffle.
How did I get here? Well ...
Long ago, I was sharing the Sunday paper with my husband and, as often happened when I read the
news, tears fell. It was during the sixties when we had this thing going called the Vietnam
War, which was actually a war in all of IndoChina but its horror seems less if we confine it
rhetorically to one country.
Of course, we didn't call it war. How could it be a war when the President did not declare it,
the Senate gave neither advice nor consent, and the House did not allocate funds? Whatever.
The fact is, people were maimed, physically and emotionally. Men, women and children were
dying in Southeast Asia.
As a young woman, my response to such violence was to weep or get depressed. How much easier
to do that than to make needed changes in my own life. But, I had picked the wrong person with
whom to share the paper that morning. My husband looked up from his section of the Times and
laid down a gauntlet:
"Anne, I'm willing to pay for a plane ticket so that you can go to Vietnam and do something
useful over there." The words were gently spoken but I understood the subtext: I was
indulging in a cheap catharsis that cost me nothing and when I dried my eyes I could applaud
myself for being compassionate without having lifted a finger to do anything constructive.
Well, I did stop crying but I did not go to Vietnam. However, my husband's offer and my
understanding of it were a major turning point, and now that I'm performing in Act III of this
play called "Life" I am less tolerant of analysis-as-paralysis, endless nattering about war and
violence while doing nothing, nothing at all.
In brief, that's how I came to realize we need a national or even an international Peace Day on
which we actually do something to take down walls that have been built where there should be
tolerance, friendship and love.
When should we do it? Not Sunday or the Sabbath. Those days are already burdened with
preaching and praying instead of doing. How about now? We could start right here on the
Peninsula so that we will be known not only for the silicon chip but for the realization that
all peace is personal.
Because the wheels of congress grind slowly it will take awhile for the idea to work its way
through the system. Don't wait. Don't hesitate. We'll talk ourselves out of it. Just burn up
the wires with phone calls, faxes and email. If that doesn't appeal, write an old fashioned
letter or send a post card: "Wish you were here!"
END
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Dr. Anne Saldich
Certified Counselor,
Therapist, Writer
US of America
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