Peace doesn’t begin with another person.

It begins with me. 

“Peace.” Hearing the word, our thoughts often turn to another one: “World.” We smile. Then sigh. It’s a lovely ideal, but one which feels utterly beyond us.

Finding ourselves unsure what to do about world peace, let’s consider an alternative: peace in our little corner of the world. Granted, many days this also seems beyond us, but it is at least it’s something we can work towards. Indeed, it’s why we learn Buddhism and cultivate ourselves.

How?

We cultivate self-discipline to refrain from speech that would disturb others.

We cultivate broad-mindedness to better appreciate and respect others’ viewpoints.

We cultivate compassion to see a stranger’s suffering as clearly as our own and to seek a way to alleviate it, humility to realize we acted improperly and need to apologize, generosity to share our good fortune with those who have less than we do.

Succeeding in these, we will help bring peace to those around us.

Pleasure from indulging ourselves is momentary.

Guilt from having done so lasts much longer. 

Eating an entire bag of chips, browsing online and impulsively buying a new gadget, hitting snooze on the alarm clock as we burrow back into the sheets—all are done because we feel entitled to them.

Perhaps we had worked hard and felt a reward was deserved.

Perhaps we hadn’t worked hard and sought to distract ourselves from self-reproach.

Perhaps we were unhappy.

Or just bored.

And so we indulged ourself and felt a surge of enjoyment. All too soon, however, that momentary pleasure passes and only the memory remains. And with it guilt. Having previously determined the futility of such indulgences, we had told ourselves we wouldn’t repeat them. And yet, we just did. Feelings of frustration, remorse, embarrassment fester within us. They linger, enduring far longer than any fleeting satisfaction from our latest bout of indulgence.

What can we do?

Understand we have more work to do, commit ourselves to doing it, and get to work.