Most of us of a certain vintage and culture remember this great song, “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?” by Elvis Costello. I remember seeing him for the first time on Saturday Night Live when I was in high school singing “Alison.” He was an unusual rocker for the time. A bit awkward and gangly, not dressed like a Mick Jagger, yet belting out lyrics with real depth. As he said in the title of one of his albums stated, “My Aim is True.”
Our culture doesn’t usually embrace much serious talk of true Peace, Love or Understanding. We can immerse ourselves in conflict, dissension, strife, argument and division. Perhaps it’s time we shifted our focus away (at least some of the time) from a media and a political culture designed to incite anger, place blame, stoke discord and fuel the fires of conflict.
If we spend a little more time each day thinking more about what we want to experience in life, rather than on all the things we see we don’t prefer, we can begin to move in the direction of creating the life and the experiences we do want to have. It’s not that there isn’t tough stuff happening out there, but if when we bring anger and conflict to the table, we have little chance of moving things in a more positive direction. As Einstein notably said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
In the Toltec tradition (which gained widespread reach through the work of Don Miguel Ruiz) they speak of the Dream of the Planet. This is a way of expressing that we are all part of a world–and a consciousness–that we collectively created or “dreamed” into existence. If you reflect on this, you see the truth of it. All of man’s institutions, social structures, governments, economies, conflicts, etc. are the result of our beliefs and the “dreams” of the world we, well at least some of us, wanted to create.
So, if we want to create a world where Peace, Love and Understanding aren’t funny, but are the foundation principles we all operate on in all of our interactions, it’s got to start with each one of us. What if we each spent a little less time on news feeds that inflame us and a little more time in meditation, reflection, communication, sharing and visioning a different world and a different state of consciousness?
This does not mean we don’t take action, but rather that our actions are a conscious and appropriate response to move closer to the world we want to see, rather than unconscious and angry reactions to things and experiences we do not like.
What’s so funny about Peace, Love and Understanding? As another song about war goes…” Absolutely Nothing!” Focus on what you want to experience and may your “Aim Be True.”
Be Joyful,
Paul Rogers
Cofounder, LOVE. LIFE. WISDOM. LLC