CAPTURING THE ELUSIVE PEACE

By Anelyn E. Labadan
SST-III
Bulua National High School

Peace. It is a condition where an individual enjoy friendly relations with others, untroubled by disputes.
It is also a state where man is free from noise, worries, troubles, fears, war and fights. A familiar word,
but remains a strange condition. The people, the nations, and the whole world are all, but wanting and
longing for peace.

We need peace. It becomes an ultimate goal way back from the days of yore to the contemporary world
of today. The longing and the search have been wearisome for we’ve been waiting for something not
doomed to come. Early people tried to achieve peace but then more wars, worse than ever are born.
War of tribe against tribe, city against city, dynasty against dynasty, kingdom against kingdom, empire
against empire, nation against nation until the first World War roared the earth and seconded by the
more devastating World War II. Even though peace-keeping organizations have at least managed to
prevent war, still we failed to achieve peace in the very sense of the word. War continues killing
thousands in a single strike. Now, the chance for peace becomes smaller every day. There will come a
day when it becomes a dream far from reality.

We need peace very much, but it is nowhere to be found. But how can we achieve world peace when
there’s no peace within us? We are at war with ourselves, daily battling between good and evil. What
we are trying to curtail is the literal war but little did we know that it rooted from the war within
ourselves. To solve the war may not be the starting point, rather let us first learn to discipline and tame
ourselves so we can lessen the war that hurdles us. The seed of peace must be planted within and let it
grow in us.

If we cannot stop our own war, then there’s no way out for peace to truly exist.