All Peace Is Local

I once received peace at an unlikely moment. I was sitting in a wheelchair in a dimly lit, cold waiting area surrounded by stark, glaring operating rooms, waiting to have major surgery. My life was on the line. I was forty-one years old.

I had had my check-ins with the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, my IV had been started, and my mother and husband had been sent to the waiting room. Doctors and nurses buzzed around me, but I was all by myself. The fear of leaving my young children and my husband became overwhelming. With nothing to distract me, all I could do right then was be completely present to my fear, even though I felt like it would crush me. I felt like I might not survive my emotions, never mind the surgery.

But sitting there in that dark, freezing waiting area, all alone, forced to sit with my dis-ease, I was suddenly and astonishingly held: held in peace and stillness and comfort. Out of the blue, I had a profound sense of okayness. This was not the feeling that I would wake up from the surgery and hear that I would be fine. The outcome of the surgery and my pending diagnosis and prognosis had nothing to do with this feeling. Rather, this was the feeling that I would be fine no matter what. No matter what. The experience is challenging to put into words. The best description I can come up with is that it was womb-like: I had a sense of being in and of and not separate, yet still distinct. I was myself, but I was also part of everything everywhere, and nothing would ever change that.

This unexpected gift of peace — which really did pass all understanding — is something I’ve examined countless times. It is both mystery and teacher. Perhaps most importantly, it has taught me that when we receive an unlikely gift — when we have an experience of peace, joy, love, or any experience of goodness — we realize what is possible. We know it is possible because we’ve just experienced it. And also, a gap is exposed: through our experience, we see how the goodness we’ve just received is also missing in this world. So, when we receive such a gift, as I received unlikely peace that day of my surgery, it is also an invitation to cultivate that thing that simultaneously exists and is missing. Peace can be received. I received it. But it must also be cultivated, extended, made.

I had to be both still and alone in order to receive that surprising peace. It made me realize it’s probably worth my while to be still and alone at times when I’m not forced into it outside an OR. When we are a non-anxious, settled presence, it is a blessing to the people around us. This is something I need to work on, but it’s something I know is possible. It is something I can cultivate.

On Sundays, in many Christian churches, congregations pass the peace. Each person extends a hand to another and says “Peace be with you.” I am struck by the preciseness of what this ritual captures: peace begins with one individual, then they extend it, passing it on to another, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Recent neuroscience echoes the idea that peace is passed from one person to another. In an article entitled “Why Calmness Can Be Contagious: The powerful science behind co-regulation,” health, parenting, and culture journalist Ashely Abramson quotes Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, who says, “‘There’s an obvious contagious effect with our emotional and cognitive experiences; we’re constantly affected by others and their emotional states.’” The article explores co-regulation, “the ability to alter one’s emotional and physiological state in response to another person’s behavior,” and neuroception, “an automatic process by which the nervous system detects cues of safety and danger, and triggers biological changes accordingly.” Abramson writes, “researchers believe a calm, empathetic therapist can function as an ‘auxiliary cortex,’ or an external sense of safety, for a dysregulated client.” Wow. We may not be therapists, but in our interactions with our families, at our jobs, and even in line at the post office, by attending to the energy we bring, we have a very real opportunity to pass the peace.

At this time of year, we often hear the phrase “peace on earth,” but my own mysterious experience and this recent neuroscience have helped me to understand that, like all politics are local, all peace is local. It starts with each one of us, and then we pass it on, just like in the lovely Sunday morning ritual. So, with gratitude for the gift I received that day outside the OR, I accept the invitation it contained and say: let peace begin with me; let me pass it on.