Guiding Light: The Quest For Peace

In the last few years, the clamouring for economic prosperity has given way to a simple quest for peace, with wars raging in Europe and the Middle East. Maslow explained human needs in the form of a simple pyramid. At the very base is the need for physical well-being and security; our attention shifts to things like the need for belonging and self-actualisation only when the basic needs are taken care of. War and strife have reminded us about how we had been able to take these basics for granted, only to be reminded rudely about how vulnerable and exposed we are as a people and, more importantly, we are more interconnected than ever before.

The need for more and expansionism comes from a sense of lack or pure greed, both fuelling the desire to acquire more. There is more than enough on this beautiful planet for us all, but we have been able to somehow reduce life to a zero-sum game, convincing ourselves that for us to win, someone else has to lose. The reality is that life is just not that binary for the most part; not all outcomes are mutually exclusive, and different interests and objectives can co-exist so long as we can all be a bit more sensitive to each other’s needs.

We have paid a very heavy price for our freedoms, and we need to acknowledge and be grateful for the sacrifice of three brave young men on the 94th anniversary of their martyrdom tomorrow: Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, who had the courage and tenacity to stand up to tyranny. Yet, we continue to find fault lines which fragment national ambition and hinder progress when the fact is that we are inheritors of a destiny and heritage so rich and complete that it is still the envy of the world.

Peace is a collective state of mind. A state of centredness and balance is paramount to achieving individual peace of mind, which influences our interactions with those around us, and kindness and patience most certainly rub off on other people. There is no shortcut to this state of mind; it comes from focusing on the present, which can be inculcated through practices such as meditation, mindfulness and yoga. So, if it’s world peace you seek, then, as a great man once said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world!”