A Place For Peace— Coming to Kada Gallery, Erie
I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that every-thing will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
—Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Reading the words above from Anne Frank’s diary, I am both gladdened and saddened. Gladdened by her youthful optimism, which is hopeful and infectious, inspiring belief that a better world is imminent. I have felt that same sense of hope when looking up at the sky.
I am then saddened by the reality that she, like so many millions, was deprived of the chance to achieve the happiness she sought.
I might be phrasing that wrong. Maybe happiness should not be equated with peace and tranquility. I suppose you can have an inner peace without feeling a sense of happiness. Maybe it is just as the author Gustave Flaubert wrote to fellow author Ivan Turgenev:
I don’t believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.
But maybe not. I think happiness is possible. But it’s a fleeting moment or two, a temporary joy in the result of circumstance.
Tranquility is something more than that. It is an inner quiet based on an understanding of one’s purpose and meaning in life. Maybe Anne Frank, even in the cruelty of the days that followed the time when she wrote the words at the top, was able to find a sense of peace and tranquility.
I certainly hope so.
I have read accounts of others in similar situations who did just that, who found an inner peace within that allowed to live and survive within the bounds of the moment.
Maybe that is all we can hope for in this world, that beyond fleeting moments of joy there is a place of peace within.
I don’t know. It’s still not 7 AM and I am just thinking this morning. Well, trying to think. It sometimes feels like a futile gesture but for some unknown reason I keep trying.
And that gives me hope.
For this Sunday’s musical selection, let’s go with George Harrison and his Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth). Seems about right this morning…
Redtree Times 