It's in OUR Hands to Give Peace a Chance

"We share what we know, so that we all may grow."
Submitter's Note:

I came across these most uplifting words by a young New Zealand student… and they fitted perfectly into the book I’m working on and the central themes of the manuscript Though you may perhaps see these writings through the eyes of words inspired by the "idealism of youth", far removed from the "realpolitik" of today's world, I think they have real merit and are beautifully written with much feeling and passion. So here is an extract from Phwaye's powerful and inspiring article, that I'm sharing (with Phway's permission). Enjoy...

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“IT'S IN OUR HANDS TO GIVE PEACE A CHANCE"

The world is full of horror, because we do nothing to end it writes PHWAY AYE...

For generations, it has been the aching dream of humanity. Marked on the face of every man and every woman, it has been a search so powerful, it defined humanity's very existence. Driven by our moral and spiritual obligations, it has been a search towards which millions have turned their hearts and souls. This has been our search for world peace.

From the beginning, the human race has always questioned the possibility of a peaceful world, rid of war, violence and poverty. We dreamed of a world, so composed, it embraced its diversities, settled on its differences and sought, day in and day out, to help all those in need.

Will this dream of a global peace ever be achievable? Will a time ever come when peace was not just a dream, but a way of life? Or is the human race condemned by nature to live in this constant throbbing search for something we were never, essentially meant to find?

A better world will not be achieved unless we take it in OUR hands to do something about it.
We can’t expect a world of peace to come about, if we are not willing to put in the effort.

We can't deny the mistakes of the past. Neither can we fix them. But what we can do is try to understand.
Like each and every one of us, the world had to make its own mistakes. But mistakes are made to be learned from, and this is our time to learn. A better world will not be achieved, unless we take it into our hands to do something about it. We can't expect a world of peace to come about, if we are not willing to put in the effort.

The future of humanity sits on our shoulders. Do we want our children and grandchildren
to look back on us and ask why we were so stupid? Why we didn’t realise the enormity of our mistakes? Why we sat back and watched it all pass by? The world is full of horrors; not because of those who do harm, but because of those who do nothing about it.

We cannot keep ignoring these cries. Our job isn’t to step back and keep applying new bandage after bandage to old wounds. Our job is to strip the world of its old bandages and find a way to heal those wounds.

We cannot stop the war in Iraq, feed all the children in Africa, or put an end to poverty. We cannot bring about peace and change to the world in one go. But we can work to rebuild it little by little in the small things we do in our lives. Change will only come when each of us takes responsibility for finding peace within ourselves and with the people around us.

World peace will not happen ove
ight. It will not happen in our lifetime, or in 20. But what we do know is that it must. In fact it is inevitable. It is only our job to CHOOSE so.

Phway Aye, Year 12. Palmerston North Girls' High Schoolrn(extracted from an article as published in the College Herald (as part of the New Zealand Herald May 12, 2009}

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Shared by craig

"Blessed are the peace-makers... because they will accumulate plenty of Frequent Flyer points."

"Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace." - Albert Schweizer

"Let peace begin with me, let this be the moment now,
With every step I take, let this be my solemn vow,
To take each moment and live each moment in peace ete
ally.
Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me!" - C. Bailey-Lloyd ("beaut words", thanks Caroline!)

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed." - J. Krishnamurti Thanks, dearest mom, your spirit will live forever

Wars are poor chisels for carving out a peaceful tomorrow." - Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

"Peace is the best strategy, the most effective 'weapon' for economic development, that any nation can have."

• craig lock (as adapted from the words of Nelson Mandela)

We have come to a time in the history of the world, where we need to rediscover the path to peace, and the path to peace can never be war. This pathway is lined with the concept of co-existence and co-inhabitance of the world." - the words of former Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu

"Let us reach for the world that ought to be, that spark of the divine that still stirs within each one of our hearts."

• Barack Obama

"Be the change you wish to see in others. Then in changing YOUR world you help change THE world...
for the better. Peace is an idea whose time has come. "