How to Find Peace and Hope Through Your Relationships
Watch for the dangers we all face every day of succumbing to doubt, loss of hope, or just plain tiredness. Turn to your relationships. Listen to the quiet and strength of hope you can find within yourself and each other.
MAUDE: We went away the week before last for a couple of nights. We needed a break from our own sense of bleakness and confusion. Life seemed to be filling up with negative energy and distress over the political mess. It was leaking into our hearts and our relationships as well.
We found ourselves in a very special part of nature, far away from the deluge of projections, divisive storylines and media outpourings. One of the days we walked along the cliffs of Montana de Oro, a California State Park with over 6000 acres and over 7 miles of coastline. It was foggy and pretty empty of people. We’d been walking for quite some time, breathing in the air and the atmosphere, when I grabbed Phil’s hand and motioned for him to stop. I realized our footsteps were the only sound other than occasional bird noises. We stood there wrapped in stillness, in an intense sense of quiet.
The peace that permeated both of us was profound. I felt my hope and a sense of belief in goodness and love flooding through me. It was palpable. It was okay. It was more than okay. It was wonderful. We were wonderful together.
All it took was to remove ourselves from the hammering from pundits and mainstream media and replace that with a few days of concentration on ourselves, our relationship, and of course, the healing power of nature.
And then we returned, renewed, connected, and filled with peace. We were excited over the sense of planned projects we would work on, of the sense of possibilities. This was then strengthened immeasurably by the positive political shift, suffusing us with a sense of not only possibilities but also a sense of hope. Somehow, without either of us even realizing it, that precious sense of hope had been gone, or at least dormant.
Let this be a warning and signpost for dangers we all face every day – the dangers of succumbing to doubt, loss of hope, a feeling of defeat, or just plain tiredness from the extreme landscape of our daily realities. Turn to your relationships to bolster each other up. Listen to the quiet and the strength of hope that you can find within yourself and each other, and face those difficulties with belief.
You can pick each other up when one of you is down. You can help each other remember the open-endedness, and that the field of possibilities is wide open as long as you stay open to it!
PHIL: I love the way Maude recognized the silence of the place we visited, and how that physical silence created a mental silence within us.
The dissonance of the world, and its politics in particular, is a constant challenge for me. How can they think and act so differently? To answer this, I have to start closer to home, with people I actually know.
The nature of my relationships depends very much on how I see differences. I may see others as better or worse: I’ll never be as good as they are, or they don’t do things right. That is a competitive mindset. But if I drop the value judgment and see differences as just that – differences that arise because we are all unique, then they are no longer a challenge. More than that, differences are to be marveled at. How do they do that? Why do they do it that way? What must they be feeling? And if I really have to think of them as better and worse, then I must also remember a hundred other differences that are the other way around.
But alongside differences are similarities – we each eat, breathe, dream, watch Netflix – that are both fundamental to being human and shared through culture.
People have essential differences, but also an essential sameness. Talking to a human being is nothing like talking to a dog or a table or a computer. It’s a different experience. I recognize them as another human being, although it happens so naturally that it gets overlooked.
It’s when I lose sight of that humanity and only see otherness that alienation and separateness arise, and politics is a difficult test for me. Can I acknowledge that people I don’t even know are acting in the only ways they know, and they deserve love, even when they do not offer it themselves? There is no other choice. If you want love to be in the world, you have to spread it yourself.
Reading Corner
Here are some good explanations of the importance of peace and hope, and ways to achieve them.
The Power in Being Still and How to Practice Stillness “Making time for moments of stillness can have powerful mental health benefits. Here are some tips to get you started. Today, stillness can be hard to come by. There’s just so much going on. So much noise both inside and outside our brains, so many tasks on our to-do lists, and at least several screens within reach. According to the Oxford Dictionary, stillness is “the quality of being quiet and not moving.” Moments of stillness are possible even on the busiest of days. They are within our reach whenever we need them.”
Modern Relationships: How Social Media Affects Relationships “Social media has made us more aware of the lives of our loved ones. It helps improve communication and to stay connected to people near and far. But at the same time, it can also cause relationship issues if not used responsibly. Our social media accounts are like windows into our lives that allow us to share what we’re up to and how we feel with others. When overused, this can lead to comparison, feelings of envy, or even feeling left out. Here, we will go over the role of social media in modern relationships.”
Sound of Silence: How to Find Some Quietude in Your Life “This time of quietude is not only one of my favorite parts of my day, but has become an essential part of the day. It soothes the soul, quiets my inner beast, brings out the goodness in me, allows me to hear myself. Having a time of stillness in your life can be similarly wonderful, if you don’t have it already. Let’s take a look at some ways to find quietude in your life and see how the sound of silence can allow your thoughts to emerge.”