I don’t know what it’s like to leave your 2 year old and newborn to kill someone.

I don’t know what it’s like not to hear from your husband for 3 weeks when you know he is in the line of fire.

I don’t know what it’s like to start a project with a team only to have 5 of them killed in 5 months.

I won’t pretend to know and I won’t pretend to have any trite (or even profound) reasons for why it happens.

Rather, I will hold in my consciousness what I envision as the best for humanity. We can hold peace in our beings. We can start by keeping our thoughts peaceful regardless of the situation we are in. I would imagine that holding your peace when someone cuts you off in traffic is immensely easier than holding it while someone is shooting at you.

I will be patient with myself and my community. After all, wouldn’t it be easier to be patient while standing in the express line at the grocery behind the person that has a month worth of groceries, than it would be to wait 3 weeks for the email that says, “Hi, I’m okay”?

I will treasure my loved ones and colleagues. Even if you feel like Tom in marketing should be shot for what he did to your product, you can breathe a sigh of relief that he was not killed in combat before your eyes.

Even though most of us know nothing about war, we can still create a world in which peace prevails.

In Spirit,
Nneka