You’d think with something as important as inner peace would come with instructions as to how to find it. And maybe that’s been the problem. We think we’re supposed to be looking for it as if it’s out there somewhere, elusively eluding our efforts to find it.

Peace isn’t something you find. It’s something you claim. 

Peace is a decision gift-wrapped in self awareness and discernment. I don’t have to engage, respond, react, nor participate. I don’t have to defend, deny, explain, nor justify.

I need not allow myself to get sucked up in a vortex of contentious hostility.

Yet I often do until I realize what I have done.

“Is this worth my peace?” I’ve learned to silently ask myself. 

It almost never is.

My peace is my decision. It is an intention. It is always an available option, in every moment, always worthy of me prioritizing and protecting it. 

When I remember it’s not something you find. 

It’s something you claim.

Photo by Nathan Fertig on Unsplash