A PEACE of Paper

          It is hard to really understand the meaning of the word Peace. Some people believe that it is a way to live one’s live, a way that explains the meaning of what life really is about and how it should be lived. While other people say that it is just a word created in the sixties, and became the trend at the time. So it really doesn’t have an exact definition, or the same meaning for every person. You are dead; you’re finally at peace, no more worries about life’s troubles. You had a quarrel with a sibling, but you stopped the argument by claiming “peace”. Two countries fought against each other because of their differences, and had put their differences aside and created an agreement such as the “Peace Treaty” or something similar to that, or you had a long stressful day and at the end, you go back to the comfort of your own home and enter into a peace of mind. To me, the closet thing you’d be able to categorize Peace, would be under the words of calm, when you are worried-free, no longer a feud, no longer a stressful mind, you no longer have to worry about many things that troubled your mind or heart earlier. The person that I admire the most, who fully understood the definition behind Peace, would be John Lennon (1940-1980) “Give Peace a Chance,” that song not only was meant for war, but for each individual person. From what I was able to understand, we have to be in peace with each other, but in order to gain that peace, we have to be in peace with ourselves and avoid being our “own worst enemy.” I do agree that it is a very hard task to do because of our lack of faith within our own confidence. How do we expect to better ourselves if we conflict with our own struggles? How are we supposed to refrain from judging on others, if we can’t depict our own faults or accept our weaknesses?  How can we live with one another if we can’t live with ourselves? Therefore Peace does not have a specific definition, but rather an adaption that people took into their lives in order to become a better person.

                “Everybody’s talking about Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism…” when John Lennon sang those words in “Give Peace a Chance,” I was unable to find a meaning behind those words. What is he trying to say? Why would he include different religions and practices in a song about Peace? When I finally made sense of it, he was meaning that everybody is always talking about their differences and comparing who is better, but what John was trying to make people understand is that everyone believes in the same thing but different backgrounds, but all we really need to talk about is Peace, and if we all accepted it in our lives, there would be no need for differences and debates. Throughout the history of time, the government, whether united or separated, had always promised their people peace, but it was believed that in order to gain peace they must call upon themselves a war, causing families to separate and some ended to be father-less or the lack of a peace of mind. So the promise of peace can never result to such greatness because it is so hard to strive for it. Demanding for peace is just like demanding for a Utopian world, it is impossible to reach with the distorted minds of many people trying to tweak the minds of others. So whether the government strives for peace for the great of the country or for the lives of the farmers in the west or the Indians, they wouldn’t succeed in doing so because of the lack of knowledge of the definition of peace and the greedy minds of wanting everything they could lay their hands on. A promise is better kept when you know the consequences of its outcome.