Essay by Suraiya Khatun Nupur from Bangladesh aged 15 who is a student at Pabna Government Girls’ High School.

Peace is free

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Feel only peace, peace and peace. Oh, wait. There’s a problem. It’s not possible to make all people of the world meditate together everyday to regain peace. Time passes and truth becomes lie. But tears of children and cries of mothers can never lie. Today we’re talking about “building” peace though there’s nothing to build here. Peace stays within us since our birth. The bird of peace was free in our childhood. As we grow up, some monsters lock the bird in a cage. From then, the bird is flapping its wings in our hearts still today.

We are so serious about black-white, men-women. Black and white are just two colours, men and women are just two gender, isn’t it? When we were inside our mother’s womb, it was black. When we sleep, we see black all around, but it’s the most peaceful moment. And as we walk on street at night where there’s no street lamp, we mix with black. Black-white, men-women aren’t opposite words, but complementary.

Peace comes when we feed 1000 hungry people instead of buying thousand dollar shoes. We learn many things. But we never learnt how to laugh, how to cry, how to love. Hatred, war and revenge are learnt, because these things are fake. As we become adult, we become obsessed with I, me, my, mine. Our world becomes these four words. When we forget these four words, we find peace. We find peace when we help others, even when we see tiny stars and rainbow. Fortunately God doesn’t take money from our pockets for seeing a rainbow. It’s free.

We think that ‘King’ peace stays on its holy chair and there are long stairs. And we have to take necessary ‘steps’ to get to the king. Not surprisingly, there are no stairs, so how can we take ‘steps’? We have to just listen to our hearts. We release doves as a symbol of peace, like– take those doves, sell us peace. We’re sending doves and missiles in the sky at the same time, aren’t we?

Time machine!! Scientists will make a time machine and snatch peace away from Jurassic age of dinosaurs. Time machine is not invented yet, maybe it will be invented after 1000 years. Come on! I will be a ghost then, do something fast!

Peace is everywhere, locked inside cages. We just can’t see it as we’ve evolved as “peace blind” people. Some people are even allergic to peace. The solution is super easy – open the cage of your heart where peace bird is waiting. Instead of releasing some doves in the sky, let’s be the doves. We need money to manage a war, to buy guns, but peace is free. Let us remember : “Peace can become a lens through which you see the world. Be it. Live it. Radiate it out”— Wayne Dyer.

Isn’t it easy to pick up a rose instead of a gun?