The Pursuit of Peace

The problem with the world is that we pursue happiness over everything. We seek to feel. We seek to be right, to win, to succeed, to attain, to fulfill desires and needs, all of which momentarily lead to happiness.

This happiness is based on feelings and those feelings are based on events. We seek and pursue this temporary, fleeting feeling at all cost. Sometimes at other’s expense; sometimes unethically. The classic battle between the limbic system and the frontal lobe.Thus, there is rarely a “win win,” in this pursuit.

When one is right another is wrong. When one wins another loses. When one is successful sometimes another is jealous. And so the circle of hate and pain, fear and suffering, anger and revenge, continues to loop and swirl in its gnarly existence, keeping mankind trapped in a vortex of void. An emptiness he desperately fills with one event or action after another. When he fails, he drowns with drink or food, or anyother coping mechanisms.

We ought to pursue peace instead. Peace is a constant, and not reliant upon feelings or events. Peace is a stability that knows and understands that happiness is fleeting and feelings are fickle. When you seek peace, all other desires will follow suit. One after and another your joys will align, not out of desperation, nor out of lack, but from perseverance and patience, which only peace can give way to.

Seek peace. Pursue peace.

“Depart from evil and do good;
Seek peace and pursue it.” Psalm 34:14

© R. A. Douglas May 21, 2021