Make Today Your Peaceful Day
lessons from the Buddhist monks walking for peace and a message for those who still support MAGA and also for those of us who are ready for humanity to evolve
I have been sharing a series this winter on rituals for honoring the season. I am an integrative psychotherapist and have 30 years of experience accompanying people in their pain and hurt. I lived and worked in Latin America for years. In client sessions, we often explore how a person’s individual pain is connected to the larger collective - the family, cultural, societal, and global systems.
Today, I am explicitly writing from that place.
Yesterday, my husband, my daughter, her friend, and I drove down to see the Buddhist monks who are walking for peace from Texas to DC. Crowds of people gathered at the hotel where the monks were having lunch and giving a talk. So many of us were outside in the frigid cold listening to the monk’s talk because there was no more room left in the hotel hall.
People kindly crowded in closer to hear, standing on piles of snow, sitting on trunks of cars, and standing on slippery sheets of ice. Some people were carrying flowers to give to the monks, others were handing out hand warmers, I brought small cards of poetry and inspirational stickers to hand out to people!
There we all stood for an hour in the freezing cold - wind blowing, listening to wisdom, and being in the presence of kindness. People of all ages and races stood together.
The nonjudgmental, peaceful, and loving presence of the monks blanketed the crowd and changed our hearts. People were kind to each other. When I handed someone a poem, most often I was greeted with, “Oh thank you!” and “That’s so kind of you!”
The monks’ one-pointed devotion to compassion meets our hearts and opens them.
Their safe, quiet, and tender presence changes us - the way your mother or father when you were little would tuck you into bed, gently smoothing back your hair, and tenderly kissing you on your forehead - or the way you would have wanted them to.
The monk’s message was clear, “Start with loving yourself. Then practice loving your family. And say to yourself every morning, ‘Today will be my peaceful day.”
Today will be my peaceful day.
So many of us are hungry for change. And change is happening. Old political structures built on greed, domination, and hate are crumbling. The “usual” capitalist way of “doing business” is dying out. Humanity has an opportunity to evolve.
Those who cling to their power, control, and privilege are going to have a very hard time. If you have hate in your heart, if you are standing by while ICE inhumanly treats another human being, if you still support T in office — I’d imagine that you are full of fear. I’d imagine you weren’t shown much love when you were growing up, and you probably endured a lot of suffering in life that, most likely, you’ve never shared with someone else or processed in therapy. I’d imagine you don’t really love yourself. I’d imagine you carry a lot of shame. I’d imagine you were humiliated at some point in your life, maybe even abused, too.
Instead of tenderly turning toward your pain, you learned to displace it - and that turned into hate.
Hate comes from fear. Hate comes from deep wounding. It starts to “other” someone and making them less than or not human - the way T did when HE posted the horrific picture of the Obamas that depicted them as apes - because you cannot tolerate the pain within you that you have been carrying for decades.
What would happen if you paused and you listened to the monks? What if you started with loving yourself - admitting that there is a tender place within you that is wounded, hurt, ashamed, tired, scared, and has felt unloved?
What if you started by putting your hand on your heart and started to treat yourself with kindness?
What if you woke up today and said, “Today will be my peaceful day?” And you created a landscape within you of peace - choosing to say kind things to yourself and choosing to treat your body with love, choosing to say kind things to others and do kind things for others?
What if you just stopped and put your hand on your heart and admitted, “Love feels better”?
I’d imagine you are an intelligent person. You aren’t dumb. You just want to be loved, too. You are hurt and you are afraid. You are scared something is going to be taken from you and that you will lose out. You are afraid of so much. And you are hurting so deeply.
I know this because I’ve been a psychotherapist for decades. And people don’t hurt others unless they are hurting inside themselves.
Fear, shame, and pride keep us tightly locked in our set ways, when underneath is a deep anxiety, a deep grief, and sometimes a deep terror.
I feel for you. I really do. I know that something in you knows what I am saying. You can feel that pain come up late at night or in moments between being on Fox News and being on your phone. Something in you just wants to be loved. You probably have a big heart, or you used to - until something hurt you. And now, you feel threatened and scared. You think immigrants, black and brown people, women, and people of other faiths than yours are going to take something essential away from you.
Something essential is already being taken away from you every day by the hatred in your heart, by the way your anxiety keeps you gluttonously scrounging for some kind of control. Your fears keep you trapped and constricted.
Staying in that locked, tight, constricted feeling of fear and hate just doesn’t feel good. You know it. But you don’t know any other way.
The monks are offering another way.
Let them wake you up from hate.
Let them wake you up from fear.
Let them open you to love.
THAT is the way to peace.
Drop your pride and join us.
For those of us who are READY for humanity to evolve, we are moving forward. We understand that peace does not mean we stand idly by while violence and horrible atrocities are committed.
You can be very committed to peace AND stand for justice. And that’s what we who are midwifing a new way of existing on this planet are going to do.
We too need to wake each day and declare, “Today will be my peaceful day.”
We want to ground our outrage so that we embody it in wise ways and take actions that are wise.
Being peaceful does not mean we do not speak truth. Oh we will keep speaking truth. And as you love yourself - as you sit in meditation every day - even if it’s for a few minutes - and as you get curious about creating a peaceful landscape within yourself, you will be guided by your own inner wisdom.
Peace may look like being at peace with your own heart - and so therefore, speaking up about atrocities, saying “No more” to racist talk at the extended family dinner table, and asking the person in your family who is still a MAGA fan, “When were you first hurt in life? What sadness have you been carrying?”
And most likely they will be too guarded and think you are crazy. They will push you away. And you can say, “I love you too much to tolerate the hate you have. I know you are afraid. There’s another way. I hope you let love lead.”
I, too, need to wake up each day and say, “Today will be my peaceful day.” I have had plenty of times when anger, hurt, and frustration have gotten the better of me and I’ve reacted from those constricted places rather than responded from love. So I am practicing this. It is haaaaaaard when we are triggered. But I am practicing.
Let’s be alongside each other. In Spanish, there is a beautiful verb: acompañarse, to accompany. Let us accompany each other in practicing peace, unity, healing, and love. It will not look pretty. We will not always be kindly received. But when we are with like-hearted others, things can change.
I remember hearing this quote in college when I was the student director of our community outreach and resource center, and I’d like to share it with you:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has" - Marget Mead.
There is hope - WE are the hope. Let’s evolve humanity together.
Blessings,
Lisa