A Silence for Peace

A silence for a much more menial, much more smaller, and much more diaphanous living.

“Peace” is often heard these days, so often that it has become a grave notion. We hear and talk about it in the context of nations, borders, and the global present — things that feel unreachable, untouchable, and ultimately impersonal. But this is not that kind of “silence.” This is not a plea for the cessation of wars that I cannot influence or the healing of the hearts that I cannot touch.

This is a silence for a much more menial, much more smaller, and much more diaphanous living: it is for a world that I reside in.

I am shaping out this silence for the sake of humility. It is a stillness, meant for the people who root my existence — the ones who, in the grand timeline of the universe, may not have long left to live, yet who currently complete my world. They are the centre of my world. To be near them is to understand that peace is not a political treaty; it is the dull in a room where someone you love is resting. It is simply being present without demanding anything in return.

With all this, there is a sharp-snaggy contradiction that I cannot ignore. While I attempt to construct this oasis for them, I am cursed by a question of my own internal land. What about the world that resides within me?

It is a world that is not at peace; it is a world with sustained-seething uneasiness. It is currently being built on the pieces of my daily dismay. Every choice I make to distance myself, to stay silent, to hold back the gush — feels like a sacrifice for a peace that is still just a theory. I see the people around me, I see the finite nature of our time together, and I want to offer them a stillness they deserve. Yet, the disappointment is everywhere. It is in the gap between the person I want to be for them and the person I am currently becoming through these difficult and necessary decisions.

I am not just holding this silence for them; I am holding it for the uneasy, conflicted version of me that lives in the middle of it all. I am holding it for the person who has just enough time to witness them, and just enough to regret the ways I have had to harden my own heart to remain.

I know that I, too, do not have long to live — only as long as they are here to witness me. We are tied in this short-sublunary flow. So, I am forced to ask: how do I offer peace to the people I love, when the world inside my own body is under siege?

The silence, then, becomes a desperate and honest compromise. It is a peace for the uneasiness that never completely goes away. It is an unbosoming that I am a world in transit, a vessel for the people who are fading, and a container for a spirit that is restless.

I am holding this silence for the uncertain peace of “what may be.” It is like a rehearsal for a future that feels like a wedding, even if the present feels more like a funeral for the things I’ve had to let go. I am holding it for the later memories of the people who currently carry me, and for the hushed moment when that world — the one that carries me will cease to exist. So, for now, I am relying on this fluttering peace that feels exactly like the quivering of fingers holding a bowl that is already unbalanced, hoping that for just a few moments longer, the contents remain still.

It is a small, still, and sine qua non¹ of surrender to the people who are my world, and to the uneasy world that is me.

1. something absolutely indispensable or essential