at peace

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My take is this: In order to be at peace -- that seemingly elusive wish that everyone has -- you have to be at peace with yourself, to agree with yourself.

Lots of people run around proclaiming their thoughts and beliefs and asserting their certainties. Alternatively they can proclaim their uncertainties -- it amounts to the same thing: A proclamation of a self that is in or out of synch with the world around you.

All this is done in aid of a social connection -- a wish to find a home among fellow human beings who are doing precisely the same thing. It is warming, yes, but it also carries with it a cold and unremitting doubt ... forever shoring up what seems to fall into disarray. "I'm a Democract, except..." "I'm a Republican, but..." "I love Sally, except..." "I hate Johnny, but...."

Without finding out who this self is -- how it is constituted, what or whom it relies on -- how can anyone find any peace? any agreement with themselves? any peace?
Without investigation, life is just one compromise after another, one effort after another to shore up sensible thoughts and soaring beliefs. There is always a certainty that is uncertain... loud, perhaps, and heart-felt, perhaps ... but uncertain nonetheless, a compromise nonetheless.

And peace is not a compromise, any more than a sneeze or a laugh or a kiss is a compromise.

Who will do the work? I don't know.
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