By Suzanne Ondrus

Summary: This reflective creative piece of nonfiction and poems contemplates how I strive for peace in my life and how it feels without peace in my life. Why do I frequently ignore taking action to come to stillness—to peace? I present my mental blocks that prevent me from pursuing it. Learn the steps I take to find peace in my own life.

Preface

I have always liked the saying that “peace is an inside job.” It speaks to the wisdom that the one thing we can control for sure is ourselves, our reactions. I take comfort in things I can control. And the things I can’t control, like job offers, wars, and droughts—well, I don’t want to give them my attention because I feel I don’t really have any influence or power over them. I suppose the most power I feel is to send my intention for peace, but that’s invisible. You cannot see a tangible outcome from wishes or prayer.

Being at the bottom of my savings, with no job offers after having been on the job market for over a year and a half, shakes my core. I can push my mind away from rejection letters, but I cannot easily forget the dwindling sum in my bank account. I cannot easily push away the panic of forthcoming bills. I am frightened for my future. I am frightened by my present. Worry is my constant companion. Even when I am able to turn away from it and look elsewhere, I know it is there.

As a child, I had a wax candle of a little girl with yellow hair, in a blue dress, with a black fire chief hat, holding a hose. Underneath her feet, in white letters, it said, “Only you can put out the fire.” It took me years to understand that this was referring to the fire inside of one’s self. It speaks to self-control. No one spoke to me as a child about the candle’s significance. Perhaps it was given to me on one of my earliest birthdays because I don’t have a memory of receiving it. I don’t know for sure how it came into my life. However, I kept it on my dresser for years, taking in its message long before I fully understood it. At a certain point, the girlish caricature became too much, and I put it away. Yet, its message remained, rolling around in my mind’s memory and unfolding years later, when I realized my inner power.

Inner Turmoil and Uproar

I notice the absence of peace in me. It’s the rage scalding me inside, the torrents carving out gulley’s in my mind and heart. It’s ranting alone to myself about what should have been said or done. In my mind, I reprimand someone who did not meet my expectations. It’s anger at things not being done how I wanted or how I deem appropriate.

It’s waking up at 4 a.m. with my head and teeth clenched, my thoughts in swift motion, processing “what if” scenarios. What if I take job Y and then job A calls. What do I say? What do I do? There’s an explosion in my heart and mind from anxiety and depression merged. Pressure. A heaviness slowing my movement, delaying my thinking. Underneath the scorching steam, a prolonged cry for connection.

Yet, I don’t do what I should do: meditate, pray, go to nature—the things that would relieve this tension. Instead, I push or pretend to push that torrent down. I try to ignore it. I have better, more worthy things to do than sit, be still, and turn inwards, right? Yet, it won’t go away. It is a steady gutting and pressing inside.

Reasons Why I Don’t Seek Peace:

Time is money. I can see emails. I can see the clock. I can count the number in my bank account.
Production is part of proving you are alive in our modern world. The more job applications sent, whether personally applied or sent via an automatic “click apply” button, the more full you feel, thinking: sent, sent, sent, done, done, done, so that hope must come, just one yes in the inbox. Check off the to do lists and puff your chest out, feeling now you have the right to exist and merit held eye contact.
Plans, structure, mapping a destination, a goal to work towards, counting the signposts and progress along the way. Achievement and accumulation mean status. They mean acceptance.
The illusion that watching T.V. is calming. It takes my mind somewhere else, but it takes me from directly facing the torrent within and takes me from diving deeper to the stillness that lies underneath it.
Even learning can be an excuse. Taking in as much information as possible. Let’s gain knowledge, push that brain full. It’s a muscle that likes to be used. Dive into books; devour other’s stories. Feel other’s pain and joy. And often learning and reading bring relief. They still the inner storm or turn my eyes away from it. But it’s still there, just subdued.

Peace Talks Directly to Me

I call you to come outside, to sit by the oak tree. I whisper in the stream. I rasp with the wind upon your window, asking you to pause for a few minutes and let the torrent go, merge into the greater. I stroke your knees and beg them to the floor in vain. I feel sad you won’t join me. I feel sad you won’t let me inside you, where I want to flow from head to toe. You are the only door, so I know I must wait, wait for you to let me inside.

It upsets me when you suddenly fling the door upon, expecting me to run inside, as if I am standing at the ready all the time this door is closed weeks, months on end. You scream for me, want to rush me inside. I hesitate, afraid of what I will find at these times.

I want you to turn inwards and lift the heavy dark loads up and out. I want you to stream light inside. I want you to glow outward from within. I want you to meet your very stillest self. I want you to touch that cesspool of hot tar with courage, plunging down to its fullest depths.

How responsible for your emotional temperature are you? What excuses do you make for avoiding me and why? The invisible has little value in our world. If I could give you a scale to measure me, perhaps you would invite me more frequently.

Let me stroke your forehead and hair.
Let go of what you tightly hold in your fist.
Let other’s quips go.
Let your errors go.
Let yourself as knowing entity go.

Welcome release.
Welcome the void.
Welcome the absence.
Welcome the expansion.
Welcome the stillness.
Welcome your essence,
that which is at all of our cores,
that which transcends languages,
ages, and borders.

Take me, just me, into your heart
and mind,
and make me a permanent guest.

Making Time and Space to Take Peace In

Dark thoughts and worries pinch me. They shade my mind so I see only about three possibilities instead of five or seven. Depression and anxiety make for limited vision. I feel I need to release this dark cloud in my heart and mind. I am called to turn inwards.

After taking the trash out, I go to stand by a tree in the back of our house. It is winter. I am in my down coat and it is sunny. I press my back into an old pine tree, remembering how trees know how to send their roots down, how to connect to the Earth’s energy.

I listen to the tree through my back and let it guide me. I close my eyes and inside I drop down; the outside world falls away. I enter into the dark stillness and listen with my pores. I hear the birds and focus on them instead of the traffic.

Inside I fall down—or rather, it is as if I let go of many things and am free to spiral down inside me and then go into the earth. I feel expansion in my belly that lasts beyond an exhale of breath. In this stillness I feel connected to the Earth, to the world, and feel cradled in the entirety of something bigger than me.

It is kind of like self-obliteration, but also the exact opposite, for it is not an aim to destroy myself or lose myself but rather to free myself—to cut loose the heaviness, the worries and depression—to arrive at the essence of me and let me just be.

Postscript

This piece is a call to action for self-kindness. We must be gentle with ourselves as peacebuilders, yet all too often we feel we do not have time for this or we do not consider ourselves important enough. And while we release interior bombs on ourselves, bombs fall exteriorly all around our globe. Perhaps it’s the attention to war that distracts us from realizing the violence we daily wreak upon ourselves, and as a result, on others.

In America, where I am from, we focus on the political division of “Red” versus “Blue”: Republicans versus Democrats. Here in the U.S., peace would mean communities smiling together and working to combat despair, including rampant gun violence, the recession, hungry people, and the dearth of human interactions leading to isolation and suicide. Instead, we spend much time and energy gazing outside–looking at the broadcast news, at social media like Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter.

I am a big advocate of mindfulness and meditation. These tools bring us control over our emotions and our reactions. I think many of us do not see how we wreak havoc on ourselves. We make wars inside our minds with unkind self-talk and with hostile emotions—even if they remain silent and kept to ourselves. Often our emotional reactions are like bombs that we choose to release inside of ourselves.

Therefore, for me, peace is trying to feel good inside, to liberate the knots I hold inside due to worry. I am motivated to seek peace because I do not want to suffer, to feel anxiety, depression, and despair. Pain motivates me to seek peace, and one of the main ways I reach a state of peace is through meditation and by spending time in nature. It is then that I can be more open with myself and connect to the greater energetic whole of us.

In my town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, peace means convening meditation groups at the library, practicing civility during difficult conversations, and overhearing librarians who kindly talk to people with disabilities or those who are experiencing homelessness. It means lots of trees, parks, no litter, or honking cars. In my country, peace means not fearing for your life or for your child’s safety. Peace means no guns. Peace means no raised angry voices.

You must remember the few people you have met that radiate joy or love. Maybe it was a cashier at the drugstore, who always widely smiled at you and other customers, greeted you, and asked how you were. You remember the uplifting feeling that person instilled in you. Surely such joy makers are focused in the present and surely they have self-love and self-peace as their foundation.

Imagine how the world could change if we each gave peace a chance daily within ourselves. This is the one solid tangible step I can see towards making more peace in this world: a peace where the most human interactions—whether they be at the grocery store, with the house inspector or tax collector—would be eye-to-eye meetings that ignite light, that pass a lit candle to an unlit.

For me, peace is personal and the personal is political. How we function in the world impacts it. If we can be at peace with ourselves, we can be better in the world, with others, and this in turn spreads peace. I challenge you, fellow peacebuilders, to light your own candle by turning inside to stillness for a moment.

About the Author

Suzanne Ondrus‘ first poetry book, Passion Seeds (an American and Burkinabe love story addressing racism in an interracial and intercultural relationship), won the 2013 Vernice Quebodeaux Prize. She was Gordon Square Review‘s 2022 prose runner-up winner, Geauga Park’s 2022 prose winner, Reed Magazine’s 2013 Markham Poetry Prize winner, a 2017 featured UNESCO World Book Capital poet in Guinea, Conakry, and a 2018-2020 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso. Her work delves into different cultures, history, racism, body image, African fashion, and women’s sexuality.

Suzanne’s newest poetry book, Death of an Unvirtuous Woman, examines domestic violence in an 1881 Ohio German immigrant couple. Hear her on her YouTube channel, @MsOndrus, and find her updates on suzanneondrus.com. Contact Suzanne at: suzanne.ondrus@gmail.com.

Inside Working for Peace