A friend shared a beautiful story of a king who offered a prize to the artist who best portrayed peace. He looked at all the pictures and liked two. One was a picture of a calm lake, mirroring the mountains and the peaceful blue sky above with fluffy clouds. The other one too had mountains, but they were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky from which rain fell, and down the side of the mountain was a tumbling waterfall. On closer look, the king saw a tiny bush growing in the crack of a rock behind the waterfall, and in that bush, a mother bird had built a nest in which she peacefully sat. The king chose the second picture.

He explained that real peace was not about being in the midst of calm, it was the ability to be in the midst of noise, trouble, and hard work, and yet find calm in your heart.

We all desire a happy and peaceful life for ourselves. As we strive hard to achieve that, we have to honestly ask ourselves a fundamental question – are we seeking a comfortable and peaceful environment with no challenges, or are we seeking to learn how to maintain our calm and peace in the midst of chaos? If we reflect on our state of mind, we may well find that even though we intellectually understand the latter, we secretly wish for the former.

We live in two worlds – the outer world of events, circumstances, and results, and our inner world of perspective, response, and state of mind. The outer world may give us a sense of well-being and comfort, but peace is to be discovered in our inner world.

The outer world of actions and their consequent results is not in our control. To peg our happiness with that will leave us as a battered reed being tossed in the flow of life – feeling good when the situation is favourable, broken when challenges come our way. The inner world of peace is in our control, like a still flame protected by the cover of our knowledge, reflection, and understanding of life.

The outer world is transient, constantly changing, and demonstrating its impermanence. The changeless, eternal and permanent resides in our inner world, which, when we learn how to tap into, connects us with the lasting peace we seek.

In the outer world, we are happy and successful because of. In our inner world, we are peaceful in spite of. We may find comfort when our desires are fulfilled externally, but we find peace when we operate with a spirit of service from within.

We need skill and knowledge to navigate the outer world. We can only tap into the inner world of peace through our daily discipline of reading, reflecting, internalizing, and most importantly believing and having faith. Self-doubt may make us knowledgeable, but not peaceful.

Life is not about waking up each day, secretly hoping all will be well and fearing situations that may befall us. It is about building our nest of peace amongst the toughest rocks of life.

(Picture – Mountains as seen from Caux, Switzerland)