PEACE

I heard the word “peace” and this time, I raised my head up to ponder on this word. This time, I opened my eyes to the golden evening summer sky and imagined the view from the window of an airplane smoothly gliding over pillows of clouds, with the evening setting sun at one corner of the sky, with golden rays lining the edges of every puff of clouds.

This thought made me begin to feel like I was on top of the world like literally; I thought I knew what it felt like to fly. I felt the soft surficial winds breeze past me from time to time. Damn all for what? PEACE. I began to feel the winds soothe the tiniest of my nerve endings and caress the stiffest of goose pimples behind my arms. I could smell the aroma of freedom, see the beauty of infinity, enjoy the music of quiet, and savour the taste of limitless. It was bliss!
After such an amazing mental trip, the cry of a homeless street kid awakened me to the sad reality of this world. Just then, a juvenile hawker called to me ;”buy pure water, pure water…” I shook my head in discombobulation, and went my way thinking; “peace, would we ever get there?”.
Like me, there are many people in this world right now who have such dreams, thoughts and imaginations of peace, but the actuality of this is that; a million or even a billion thoughts, dreams, wishes, and imaginations about peace would never bring about actual, sustainable peace in this world of ours. We are faced with the question; “how do we turn our ‘peace dreams’ into reality”. It may not be like my one time burst of esoteric realization of peace –which I term “my Utopic Dream’’, but it may be a true and sincere anticipation of peace in one aspect or the other.

Peace is the only tool against Racism, Wars, Certain manmade disasters and even overpopulation in our prisons. To a kid in war-torn Syria, peace means a cessation of wars and loud noise of guns firing, grenades blowing and missiles shaking the earth moving at supersonic speeds, even for a day. To a black kid in Texas, peace could be day when there wouldn’t be news of an uncle or distant cousin being a victim of gun violence. To an hungry teen in Somalia, peace could be a day with plenty of tasty food from mummy and daddy and she doesn’t have to think of remaining even a grain of food for lunch. To a young man in Japan, peace could mean a day where he doesn’t have to come across any situation where he would have to contemplate suicide.

Whatever your definition or notion of peace is, they would only be lofty dreams and wishes if you don’t do something about it, in your own little way, they would remain just dreams. That’s what this article is about; to inspire you to stand up and work towards it, because global peace, starts with a step, ask Jawaharlal Nehru and Kwame Nkrumah the founding fathers of the CommonWealth of nations.