MY PERSONAL PRACTICE OF PEACE

Slowly I’m learning that the process of creating peace begins with me. This is good to know! At least now I’m looking in the right place—not outside myself, not on the village green or in Washington D.C. In my years following my time in Vietnam I have, at times been the angriest guy I know.

In my book "Life is War But You Can Win" written in the vernacular of the soldiers in Vietnam, I wrote a paragraph on what Vietnam Vets call Righteous Anger: "I had righteous anger for twenty years after I got back to the World. I was ready to rip someone’s face off when he smiled the wrong way. I thought I deserved to be angry. I thought I was somehow unique and special because I’d been to Nam. I figured it was okay for me to be angry if I didn’t like the way you did something. One day I saw myself for who I was. I was acting out, and my sons and my wife were taking the brunt of my anger. I had no right to yell at them. I had no right to be angry at them. And that’s when I finally went to get some help. It took me three years to learn this very difficult lesson. And what I also learned along the way was that I’m not special. I’m not unique. I’m just another warm body takin’ up space back in the World."

I wrote that in 1993—25 years after I came back. It may have been a slow start but the good thing is, it WAS a start. And I can tell, by reading my words, that I’ve made some improvement since then—I can feel that I’m a little less angry now. What life has taught me in the ten years since I wrote that is that anger is inextricably connected to fear. I have learned that when I’m angry, if I just scratch a little underneath it, I will find something right below the surface that frightens me. It’s that simple!

My anger—like the other Vietnam Vets I know—came from being frightened on a daily basis for a year. It was the accumulation of so much fright that it became imbedded so deeply it calcified; hence the length of time needed to unearth and to dissolve it. But, this process of "getting it", that is slowly beginning to see it and then dealing with it, definitely makes me an expert. Not something to necessarily be proud of—being an anger —but now perhaps I can put that expertise to good use.

I’m presuming that most humans have certain degrees of the angry nature that possessed me for so long. So what I’m suggesting is that we think of our anger as the energy it is and we learn to transform it. First we recognize that our anger is caused simply by fear. But we don’t let the fear turn angry. By recognizing it, we can catch it just in time so it dissipates and transforms itself into an easier, more natural state—peace. Energy is energy and in its basic state it is neutral—neither good nor bad—neither angry nor peaceful. So, whenever we become aware that we are frightened—afraid—instead of getting mad, we get peaceful, get happy. We don’t even have to try, it simply happens.

How else are we going to create peace in the world? If you or I are an angry soul, even if we carry a banner for peace, we are not in actuality creating peace at all, we’re doing just the opposite. I know this to be, true. Remember, I AM the expert on anger!

Peace, sisters and brothers…peace.