The cost of peace

Some mornings the cravings are still loud.

Not for any THING in particular, but a feeling.

Anything can feel like home if it’s familiar enough - even pain.

Especially pain - if we’re used to relating intensity to meaning. Chaos to caring. Losing to loving.

Penance for the things we’ve yet to forgive ourselves for.

All of human emotion feels good sometimes. Even the difficult ones. It’s usually the difficult ones that inspire us. Longing, sadness, heartbreak are the inspiration of millions of songs, poems, books, paintings. It is because of the heaviness that we are driven to do something to lighten it.

So I wonder sometimes, if all this self-inflicted suffering is masturbatory somehow. Scratching some itch to feel pain, no matter how hard that is to admit.

Perhaps part of healing is the willingness to decide that things don’t have to be intense to have meaning.

Boredom and contentment are right next to each other on the emotional scale. Peace can feel downright boring if we aren’t aware of it. Our bodies try to tell us, but our minds will decide which it is based on what’s comfortable. What it knows. The familiar will always feel safer, temporarily. It’s why we tread down the same path over and over, even when we know where it ends isn’t where we want to go.

We can find different things to satisfy our cravings. But the satisfaction will never last until we name the craving itself. The feeling you’re familiar with. The old feeling you’re tired of having - even if it feels safe. The new feeling you want to create - even if it feels scary.

For so many of us, it’s not pain that scares us, but joy.

The cost of peace is spending the pain you’ve accumulated over the years. No longer saving it up like a backup plan that keeps you safe. Using it wisely as a currency to add experience to your choices. And using that experience to add courage to your present.

We need courage to feel joy. Because anything that is worth having faces the possibility of loss. Grief, again. Pain, again.

And the clarity to realize that one could not exist without the other.

Too often we confuse how intense we feel something with how meaningful it is.

Or how intense of a reaction we want from somebody in order to validate what we mean to them.

We’ve been told that meaningful moments need to be loud, showy and dramatic. But more often than not, meaningful moments are the quiet ones. Because usually the bigger the feeling, the more we want to hide it. The harder it is to show.

It takes courage to be quiet, gentle and honest. It’s tempting to use the noise of a grand gesture to cover the tender heart of vulnerability.

Healing isn’t some magical thing that switches you from pain to peace. All it is is you noticing every time your behaviour has changed. Every time you want to act like you always have, but then don’t. Every time you choose something different. And it doesn’t have to be a perfect score to be consistent.

You can let yourself feel joy, now.

Without fear of it being taken away.

Without fear of it changing.

Without fear of “celebrating too soon.”

It’s all temporary. It’s how we were made. We’re taught to hold onto things, as if permanence is what makes something valuable, worthy to be had. But it’s the opposite.

The impermanence of things is what makes it precious. That includes you. Look at what is still costing you your peace, and spend it, willingly, freely. Anything worth having has always been here, now.

There’s no finish line. Some mornings, you’ll find your mind has gone straight back to its most comfortable habits. So you remind yourself again - you’re not there anymore. And begin again.