Day 1

Growing up, I didn't really receive any messages about peace except one memorable interaction with my father around my teenage years. He was a World War 2 History Buff and told me that if I’d ever get conscripted or called up for duty in war, he’d go to the ends of the earth to help me escape. He told me that I had no place dying on a field somewhere for no reason. To me, peace was only used as the opposite of war. Personal peace was not a concept.

Being born in South Africa at the height of the Apartheid regime, as a white male I knew nothing but a sheltered life of peace. My parents voted for a government to keep the majority of the nation restricted from access to all government, social, and economic activities. To an 8-year-old white boy, when Nelson Mandela and the ANC got voted into power this meant very little. I was completely isolated from these events and only after 1994, I started noticing some new faces joining our school. Thinking back now, the perspective change for the new learners joining the school must have been daunting, to say the least. I never knew the privileges I received and the restrictions that were placed on others to have those privileges. Even after reintegration, I still could not comprehend the hardships others faced, as I never had a window into their lives. Only as an adult, having learned about apartheid in history, did I come to fully comprehend the atrocities that were done to the majority of our nation.

Thinking back, my personal peace was that my brother did not bully me in the afternoons after school. In retrospect, that bullying could have been peace for others who were living in my country.

 

I think what gives me a unique insight into peace education is my ability to view from other perspectives. I remember the day I discovered the fact that other people had a different perspective so vividly. I was driving in the car on the way to the city. I looked out the window and noticed someone doing the same. I thought to myself if they’re having the same thoughts I was. As a shock to my system, I realised that they couldn’t be. I dawned on me that the odds of a single person thinking my thoughts are that moment might be close to none. I realised that we all have different experiences growing up and not all our thoughts are the same. It’s always been ingrained in me to look at life from someone else's point of view and I tend to always root for the underdog. 

Daily Peace Action. 

I couldn’t figure out a peace action and left it for the following morning. 

I have a son with autism who, every now and again, will wake up in the early morning hours and decide that he’s had enough sleep and wants to be awake. Today started as one of those days and when he woke me at 1:00 am, I discovered my peace action. I was not going to get upset or stressed, but rather just accept my fate that I would be tired for the rest of the day.