Together

"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway, Farewell to Arms

            I’ve been questioned as to why I am and continue to write about achieving peace.  I’ve even been alerted to the fact that people who preach about peace and who desire it with the utmost passion are usually the ones “taken out,” as to which I responded:

“Great.  Hope it’s for Chinese food because I love being taken out to Chinese food.”

But I digress.  Something like this should not even correlate any aspects of meticulousness when it comes to ‘self.’  If I could write a whole string of pieces on peace and have people read it, contemplate on it and even share it, then I would be satisfied to leave this planet.  Robert Baden-Powell once said, “Leave this world a little better than you found it.”

But why isn’t this more commonplace?  Why does something like this seem so far-fetched?  Anyone in their right mind knows that Lego create their masterpieces or their depiction by placing blocks together, not tearing them apart.  Even more so, the world peace I seek is not one where we are an eternal utopia.  I choose not to seek a world where we don’t argue with one another or where we are all alike.  One of the essences of life is in our differences and celebrating them. 

The world peace I seek is more of the functioning co-existence.  And living in a world where an entire city, more importantly the lives (and the generations that may come after that) could be destroyed and shattered within a matter of seconds, exponentially adds to the importance of this crusade.  The weapons humans have created and continue to create will never do anything else apart from killing and ending. 

Maybe too often we accept this idea that we need to compete with one another.  

-         To succeed

-         To get ahead

-         To win

-         To survive

But there are far more letters in the word “together” than there are in the word “me.”  There is 1 more letter in the word, “us,” rather than when one says, “I.” 

And when Ernest Hemingway pointed out that the world breaks “every one,” that includes you and me.  The world broke your grandfather, your grandmother, your father, and your mother.  It will break you, your wife or husband, your children, and your children’s children.  It has broken the generation before you and it will break the generation after you.  It has broken you and it broken me.

And as it has broken, it breaks without bias.  It breaks without regard to your color, race, or creed.  And it breaks not just the “I,” but rather the “us.”  We are all in this together.  Let’s not destroy our neighbors over the petty nothings.  They say where one has fallen, one has leaped.  So our co-existence and togetherness can help us succeed together when the commonality continues to be the divide.

And so after you read this, just think for a couple of minutes how far you have come individually.  Think about your ‘highest of highs’ and your ‘lowest of lows.’  Think about the family you’ve had, the family you have, and the family you might continue to have.  Think about why life is worth living and the life you’ve built.

     And now think about how war and weapons can take all that away in a heartbeat.

Let us share the passion of existence and continue to re-examine how we may achieve peace not just for our time, but for all time.