I have spent a lifetime waiting for peace. Working for it, wrangling it, and negotiating with it. It’s been a lot like a laughing toddler slipping from my grasp and running ahead as I tried to wrestle it back into place.
I was positive that if I got into medical school life would finally be good. Only to find that, wait, no, if I get into residency it will be settled. This turned into peace once I find a job, once I get promoted, once I complete my thesis, or once I get perfect patient experience scores. Then, surely, I will finally be able to sit on top of my career aspirational mountaintop and rest.
I prayed once in bargaining fashion to find someone to marry, and then twice that we have a healthy child, and now repeatedly that these teenagers make it to adulthood without killing themselves. I’m sure once they find someone to marry, or once everyone is settled and happy, that then I can sit on my happy matriarchal couch and enjoy the situation.
I have told a friend that once I lose this weight, once I run a 5K, once my blood pressure is fixed, once I finally take up yoga, or when I retire and finally have more time, to de-stress and meditate that then I will be able to feel at peace and healthy.
I can’t tell you how many times in my life I am sure I finally will be rid of my worries and challenges and find peace, IF (insert desired outcome).
But sadly, chasing the outcome-based peace never came and stayed for more than an hour or two. There was always more work to do.
Most recently I was riddled with fear about this country’s upcoming national elections. I was full of what my husband describes as “piss and vinegar”. I was giving my political speech to him, throwing noble-cause punches into the air, all while still in my jammies.
But, he had to go help a friend move a refrigerator and I needed to get dressed to meet my friends for coffee, and so we both needed a little reprieve from my fervor. My husband easily stepped away from me, but I was stuck with me, and needed a little help.
I did what mentors have taught me and tried a prayer to help locate some peace. (I truthfully always do this reluctantly and as a last resort as I run out of my own solutions.)
Maybe you’ve been there too: Peace being held hostage to the future and a present full of fear that is hard to manage.
Soon after that prayer I found myself with friends talking about upcoming surgeries and other scary things, when an awful truth wedged its way into my consciousness. With the flash of a bright light turning on, my mind held the thought, “It won’t be done on November 6th.”
With this thought came a full and powerful realization that I will wake up on November 6th, and there will still be work to do. I will still need to figure out how I will be a citizen, how I will model to the younger, how I will build bridges to neighbors. I have this work to do today, AND I will still have this work to do later.
And strangely, that is where I found peace today. It was in the realization that it will never be done. There will always be a sunrise that comes with a day full of decisions about what work I will do. The assignment may change from school to residency to job, or from babies to young adult children, or from working for one civic issue that matters to another, but it will never be finished.
When I realized this truth, peace stopped being something that ran ahead of me like a laughing toddler trying to get away, and instead climbed right in my lap to be in the middle of the wild ride, with an eager face that said, “So where are we going next??”
