Vachon Imagined

Peace is the loss of self.

It is life as it is, purified.

There is something within us that can purify the self, and it is called love.

You recognize people who live from it. They are calm under pressure. They do not add anger to anger. They are gentle in the face of catastrophe and loving in the presence of hate. They do not need to become cruel simply because cruelty has entered the room.

Because anger wants something.

Anger wants to punish.

Love wants to heal what punishment created.

This is why slander, gossip, humiliation, and the desire to punish another person can never produce peace. They may temporarily satisfy the wounded self, but they do not heal it.

Peace will never ask you to destroy someone.

Peace will ask you to see them.

It will ask you to see yourself.

It will ask you to recognize that the person standing against you is still a human being moving through the same life, carrying their own wounds, fears, desires, and misunderstandings.

This does not mean abandoning boundaries or allowing harm.

It means refusing to become the harm you are trying to stop.

Because when you punish another person simply for being who they are, you are not at peace with them—and you are not at peace with yourself.

That is a self divided against itself.

Love does not need to destroy what it does not understand.

It understands that what is whole does not require destruction to prove its worth.

And God will never need your hatred or your vengeance to accomplish what love can do.