Peace Happens One Person at a Time

by Abigail Somma

October 2020

Whenever I meet with a new mindfulness and meditation class, I tell them a little bit about my personal journey; how I graduated with a Master’s in international relations and economics; how I got jobs at the World Bank and the UN; how I wanted to make a contribution to peace in the world. I also tell them how along my career path, I encountered stress, anxiety and depression; how my intentions were pretty good, but something  wasn’t working. Could I really contribute to peace in the world when personally, I felt anything but peaceful? 

My challenges prompted me to seek out support, and I pretty much tried the full range of possible antidotes, everything from anti-depressants to therapy to reiki. But what really seemed to have the largest impact on my sense of wellbeing and personal peace was a daily meditation practice, and not just focusing on my breath, but becoming aware of my thoughts, underpinned by an unhelpful set of beliefs that were contributing to my state of despair. As I began to release and then replace them with a more hopeful perspective, choosing to believe in a more uplifting version of reality, the despair lifted and I eventually I began to live a different life: freer, more peaceful. Consequently, I was much better positioned to genuinely contribute to peace in the world. 

So I became a meditation teacher.

“Peace in the world happens one person at a time,” I tell participants in my classes. “What we see in the macro is a reflection of the micro.”  In other words, if we see chaos and upheaval in our collective, at the global level, there’s a good chance that it’s a mirror for the chaos and upheaval many of us are carrying around at the personal level.  The logic therefore follows that as we, individually, clear up our personal chaos – the anxiety, the fear, the despair, the unconscious grief – then the mirror will reflect back to us a sense of greater peace and calm in the world.

A common teaching in the mindfulness arena is that much of our lives are lived on a sort of autopilot, unconsciously carrying out the programs that have conditioned us, long before we even knew it was happening. Similarly, the world order seems to be on a sort of conditioned autopilot, in the way we consume the resources of our planet, in the conflicts that persist for decades, in the roles we assign to human beings based on race or gender; in how we watch helplessly as the temperature of our planet slowly ticks upward. Just as we sometimes feel personally stuck, so we sometimes feel globally stuck.

What if, at the same time that we worked toward the collective ends of a more sustainable and peaceful world, we each took it upon ourselves to turn inward and awaken the inner autopilot, release the grudges that have unnecessarily festered for too long, reflect on the fears that were planted so young we don’t even remember their root, turn toward the grief that we’re afraid to face and allow it to breathe a little. If we did that, one person at a time, then what would our planet look like?

For better or worse, 2020 may very well be the time to find out. With the collective chaos that has marked much of the year: from a global pandemic to political instability in the reigning superpower to out of control wildfires and even to killer hornets (I believe that was a thing for a while) perhaps we are actually being called to clean up our inner chaos; to look inward for solutions, as we concurrently take action in the world; to heal the relationship with ourselves so that we can in turn heal the relationships with those around us. 

Fortunately, this is already well underway as the phenomenons of mindfulness, compassion and self-care take root in all corners of the globe. An estimated 22 per cent of companies in the US now have mindfulness and meditation programs. A practice that, not long ago, would have seemed esoteric or or even kooky, is practiced in the US Congress and British Parliament. And while community and workplace programs proliferate, it’s also important to recognize that they need not be solely about improving performance and focus, or becoming more relaxed. Rather, what we need now is open recognition that a mindfulness and meditation practice can open doors to deeper refection and personal understanding; and that the goal of creating more inner peace is, in part, to carve a pathway toward our collective peace.

With this in mind, here are a few simple steps I recommend:

1. Begin a daily practice, no matter how small or short, that includes both the intention to build compassion for self and for others. The Loving Kindness practice, most notably espoused by author Sharon Salzburg, is one option to explore. Rather than just focusing on the breath, lay your hand across your heart and offer kindness to yourself and then send it out to the world.  It’s powerful, I promise.

2. Secondly, find a community to make such practice a shared experience. While the act of sitting in silent meditation may feel solitary, we can never escape our interconnection as a species, and our practice only grows in meaning and potency when we share the experience with others. 

3. Consider how and where you can bring this work forward in your own community.  This may be as a simple as a small shared gratitude practice with your family or by bringing a meditation program to your place of business. 

We are at a profound point in world history, least of all because we are beginning to understand our own role in the unfolding of the events around us; how each choice we make at the personal level, every day, can affect the whole. In some ways, that makes this an exciting and hopeful time, full of opportunity. The words aren’t new, but now is time to take them to the next level: let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.