Okay, I love IKEA but most of my purchases are cleared through my evaluation of how many parts the product has and how long it will take to assemble. IKEA is known for selling beautifully aesthetic furniture and housewares at an affordable price. This price is made affordable by the condition of “assembly required”. For many consumers, assembling their purchase is a rite of passage. Peace is similar to IKEA furniture; it’s beautiful and requires assembly.
We live in an age where a mediation app can be downloaded to your phone in less than 60 seconds. We are bombarded with attire and podcasts proclaiming peace at the click of a button shipped to your door in eco-friendly packaging. Pieces of enlightenment are often displayed alongside carefully crafted images of wealth, romantic relationships, travel, exotic landscapes, and no work.
Ancient philosophies teach us that to attain inner peace we must quiet the mind in order to grow our intuition. We must clear out our habitats and discern what is essential. Unlike IKEA, peace requires disassembly. In order to assemble the pieces of our lives that bring us peace we may need to take apart the false feelings of safety, the routines that keep us too busy to listen, and monitor our daily intake of engineered thoughts.
The truth is peace comes from practice. Practicing combinations of trust, risk, failure, and faith. We learn our tolerance for each of these virtues by putting together the pieces of our lives. Assembling the beautiful experience of our journey without illustrations or multilingual instructions can feel chaotic, the opposite of peace.
In my moments of chaos, I find it helpful to re-introduce myself to all the pieces that make me who I am. I stand in the mirror, I sit/lye on the floor, or I pull out my journal and take an inventory of all my parts. I fuss around with them to see if they fit into the reality I want to live and when I find pieces that fit I find peace. When I go through this process I often have leftover pieces that are not required to maintain the structural integrity of my peace. But instead of treating them like leftovers or attempting to force them into places they don’t fit, I put them in my toolbox for a later date. I keep the non essential pieces in a place where they don’t clutter my mind or bring me anxiety. When everything has a place I find it easier to find peace. Maybe you find peace in a quiet room, sitting by a stream, hiking a mountain, serving people, practicing your gifts, cleaning your home, or driving. Whatever your peace is, start to recognize how it’s built, what it’s made of, and practice a routine to maintain it. When you have a formula for your peace, it can be replicated. Your possession of peace will no longer be a goal to attain but a moment you assemble.