Peace to Spare

By the time Katie posts this, I will be just days shy of fifty years of age. Like many of you, I’m sure, people have always asked me the standard birthday question: Do you feel different now that you’re X? I’ve been feeling different about this birthday for a long while.

Half a century. My paternal grandmother is thriving at the one century mark as I write this. She makes me wonder what I want my next fifty years to be about. I’ve been dreaming about it, daydreaming about it, brainstorming about it, wondering about it.

It finally came to me in that in-between-sleeping-and-waking time. What I want to focus my next half-century on is giving and serving peace. I want to remember every day that I have peace to spare, peace to spare for anyone and everyone I encounter, peace to spare for every circumstance. Extra peace, beyond what I need for myself.

Did you know that peace, inner peace, is a renewable resource? When I spend enough time by myself, dreaming the dream of my life and this planet, peace wells up from inside me like a fountain. I’m with Brother Ishmael Tetteh, “Peace is happening on this planet.”

Whether we can see it or not. Whether we can feel it or not. Whether we know it or not. Deep down I know I am not alone in my commitment, that thousands of others make peace a daily practice, that this is what we universally want.

I look at it this way: I’ve spent fifty of my years nurturing, finding, losing, gaining, practicing peace in myself. I think the next fifty ought to be about giving away the abundance of peace I’ve amassed.

So, happy birthday to me. Let the peace feast begin.