inner peace

at 35, i’ve come to realize that all this time i might have had two blind spots about inner peace. and the result, or symptom, of this was that i barely felt at peace. lol.

    1. for starters, i failed to see inner peace as something inner and relied on outer factors to bring me peace. i had been looking in all the wrong places, wishing and waiting for things to get neatly sorted, thinking that the peace out there somehow would entail the peace in here. 

        well, let's unpack this trap that i fell into: "the peace out there somehow would entail the peace in here"...

        1.1  the peace out there. is it a reality? has there ever been a point in the entire history of humanity when all things were sorted? hm.... speaking for myself, no matter how many goals i checked off the list, there was always something new that came along to knock me out of balance. a disagreement here, a delay there, or covid-19!

        1.2  the more i depend on external circumstances to define my peace, the more disconnected i become from inner peace... it's like the more i depend on the modern market as a consumer to satisfy my needs, the more i lose touch with traditional crafts that impart a sense of fulfillment, self-expression, sustainability. 

        so yeah, to hell with the trap "the peace out there somehow would entail the peace in here"...

    2. what's more, i realized i wasn't actively choosing peace. i liked the idea of it, but i didn't really embody it. in fact, i often threw peace out of the window first thing the moment other things came up: emails, phone calls, deadlines, cravings, mood swings, etc. and in the midst of all this, i would tend to inner peace as an afterthought, when everything else was said and done. needless to say, this too was a recipe for anxiety, not peace.

it's taken some time for me to come around to this realization, but better late than never, i guess. now i've recognized that inner peace is never as far away as it seems—it resides within me, constantly accessible if i only take the time to seek it out. 

inner peace is, after all, inner (duh!!!), and for this reason it is squarely on me to commit to a certain measure of forethought and intentionality.