We are who we are from a very early age, maybe even before we are born. AND, we also constantly evolve throughout our lives. 

This is one of my favorite paradoxes.

I’m thinking a lot lately about Outer Peace. Our world swirls and bubbles with chaos and toxicity, so many psyches apparently living on the knife edge between tolerance and breakage, between breathing and screaming. How often are we tempted to yell, kick, throw things, or simply stop whatever we’re doing and just cry a while? How do we hold it together and simply function ourselves, much less help anybody else, and/or make any positive difference in the universe?

The longer I live the more I (re)learn that it’s about core values, goals, and trade offs, and not ego. Change is not about fighting. It’s Inner Peace in service of Outer Peace.

“Yesterday I was clever,” I knew better than everybody else. I was smart, and I wanted to show it. I came at rather than coming alongside, made simple and superficial assumptions, jumped to (often wrong) conclusions. This part of the quote expresses the necessary adolescence that we all go through in life–personal, social, and professional–the ‘know it all’ phase that our elders tolerate knowingly because their own elders did the same for them. Impetuous and defiant confidence, disregarding boundaries, testing and finding limits and resonances, if only subconsciously and often painfully. It is the organic growth and pruning of youth to early adulthood. If we’re lucky, we have mentors to guide us, helping us navigate the morass with fewer mental, emotional, and spiritual nicks, bruises, and fractures.

“…so I wanted to change the world.” Because it *should* all be a certain way, the way I think, because I know what’s right. Those who agree with me are my friends; those who don’t are not. I’m oversimplifying. But this is not far from a persistent mindset reality in our social groups well past physiologic adolescence, and not least among those who determine and enforce policy. Change the world how? According to my own world view and life philosophy, however rigid, narrow, and closed. I wonder about the (inverse?) correlation between how tightly we hold onto our rigidities and how far we have traveled, how diverse our experience, how many different cultures and realities we truly understand and empathize with? I submit that if we are honestly paying attention, if we open our eyes, minds, and hearts to the depth and breadth of any given human’s life experience, it instantly puts our all-knowing and arrogant ego in its place, which is at the back of the ‘world change’ bus.

“Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” I am still clever–perhaps ever more so with age. With wisdom, however, I apply my cleverness in a different, more mindful, relationally intelligent way. I realize that power to change is not power over, it is power to. Strong arming (which includes coercing and shaming) rarely creates lasting, meaningful change, at least not without deep human cost. When I look inward first, seeing how I myself relate to and connect with that which I wish to change, therein lies my strength. I approach any problem from an ultimately human and humane perspective, which makes me more credible, more creative, more holistic in my problem solving. This is a big ask, requiring vulnerability and a willingness to step ‘way outside of my comfort zones. How does this give me any kind of peace? Don’t I risk losing myself, my identity entirely, when I make such daring attempts at real inclusiveness?

Who am I, that I can withstand this broadening, this profound stretching of perspective?

I am clear. I am centered. I am grounded, focused, and engaged–in my Why, in my Just Cause, in my commitment to playing the infinite game of human relationship and connection as long as I possibly can. To be me, my Best Self, means constantly evolving through lived experience, while hewing closely to my core values of honesty, integrity, curiosity, humility, generosity, and kindness. My inner peace comes from knowing, at the end of each day, that I did my best to show up this way, even when it was hard. 

It’s hard when I’m attacked, dismissed, or rejected for asking open, honest questions, for challenging social norms and ‘the way we do things,’ for facing and abutting over and over the rigid, the narrow, the closed. It’s hard when I discover my own rigidity, narrowness, and closures–oh man, that is tough to take. And the practices bring me back; they de-escalate, defuse, disarm, and rejuvenate: Breath. Mindfulness. Writing. Talking. Connection.

Inner Peace may not come immediately or even for a while after a disruption. But it does come, and each training episode strengthens my skills. The peace I eventually feel, then, grows and deepens; it integrates synergistically. It cannot help but then exude, at least while it lasts, until the next trial. Intervals between trials lengthen because what disrupted my peace last year rolls off of my consciousness today. Episodes shorten as I am able to breathe and regulate through them more effectively and efficiently. I become elastic, supple–strong and soft. My peace grows, and I grow with it, as does my capacity to share it.

I am me this whole time, learning, practicing, training, ad infinitum. I am me, rooted while growing. I am me, the change I wish to see in the world.