Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

 Peace is choice and the freedom to make those choices that determine our lives. Peace is a respect for others, nature and some universals that we can find around our being. Peace is not a destination but a journey. On this journey we take friends, acquaintances, fellow travels who start as strangers and end as known quantities, loved ones, our thoughts and feelings, and our knowledge and experiences. Peace is the luggage in which we are packed for the trip. Peace can be personal, cultural or universal. In any search for peace, we start with self and choice.

The Struggle with Choice in the Pursuit of Peace

 There seems to be no choice, although there are some that come to mind at once:  give in to the system and lose the difference, accept the system and attempt to retain the difference (stop-gap solution), attack the system and become something that you are not in opposing, run away (unconceivable because it is impossible), and lastly, direct one’s life toward a natural system (and that is the trick, “What is a natural system?”).  But as was said, if there is no choice, if one is compelled to seek one’s life work, if one cannot work within a academy of ideas without creation, surface knowledge without excitement, and facts without aesthetic distance, if one if filled to the breaking from the routine that seems meaningless, if one knows what is not the way, another engulfment that is right, that is honest, this is true, that is my own, that is truly different.

At first, (1) the man does what he must do for himself, for his own awakening, for his own salvation.  In the end he does what he must do for others.  But this is not the dogmatic salvation, it is one based upon the struggle to be you.  And what is that?

A life that is obtained without defeating someone else is the struggle.  A life without the undirected violence of the animal but with the animal’s directed energy.   A life that searches for beauty in all things; tin cans, excrement, dirt, decay, blook  flowers, sun, sky, water, fornication, creation, love, friendship, pity, junk, so-called waste matter, people, things, its, one, twos, ideas, sunsets, rivers, cities, smoke, winter, toilet bowls, marriage, fossils, wax fruit, bathroom scales, Duz bottles, glass stones, ping-pong balls, staples, microscopes, tin, mirrors, radios, pots, books, bacteria, papers, spaces, matters, energies, relationships,  colors, lines, sin, yes sin, and all things that are different, that once you find them they are gone and yours forever and still different each finding. A life that is simple in the most complex meanings that that word may convey. That is, simple in the sense that all comes important is left out. But this is a life where all comes important in a scale of importance. A life that is open and filled with love and friendship and work and love. A life that may stop at any second of time and be ended, finished, terminated, ready to stop for all has been done. A life that is rich in time to work, rich in the fruits of labor, rich in the sharing of those fruits, rich in the all-embracing love that is the driving force of that work. Rich in the knowledge that what is done is important, is mine and all mine, is loved and is needed. Rich in the sense of fulfillment and joy. Rich in the sense that one has lived and not just maintained a status.

It is hard to be different. It is hard not to compromise. It is easy, I believe, to live when one finds the peace of difference, of self, of an uncompromising compromise between talent, work and expression.

It is hard to live life.

Damn it, that is the question, is it hard?

Let me see. Where can I begin? It has been hard to put ideas into concrete form - that is, into language - in the last few months. My head has been filled with images that do not lend themselves to words, but also painting has been coming slowly also. That though is different.  Painting is undergoing a step ahead that takes the pressure of time to mold.  Right now, I am only pleased with a small segment of my work. What comes next must be better. That is getting harder and harder. It is taking the filling quality of time to achieve.

The death of the president had a much more profound effect upon me than I realized then. It reinforced the direction of my work but for a time derailed my basic optimism. Just now, I could not remember how to spell optimism therefore I looked it up and was surprised by something I already know. Pigeonhole knowledge! Not a working knowledge. It said there is: ^"a. The doctrine that the good of life overbalances the pain and evil of it; b. The doctrine that reality is essentially good and c. The doctrine that the good of life overbalances the pain and evil of it.

         (2). An inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and happenings, or anticipate the best possible outcome.^" After the assassination, it seemed to be all empty - this optimism. I have always believed in two paradoxical things. Man shaped his destiny; many shape nature or/and is shaped by it (Truth, there lies somewhere between or and and). Man is the creator of his path and the slave of his creation, and he is the best of all in the best of worlds. That is the hard thing to stomach after your guts are ripped, but still the idea goes beyond the act. Kennedy^'s death is not the end of an idea but a man^'s life. The hard thing for me is that: (as one letter said after his death) he was human enough to be one of us and yet strong enough to lead us. The day he was killed optimism got kicked in the teeth. It was brought brutally in front of the mirror of reality and no one, however they hid their eyes, could miss the reflection. The doctrine that reality is essentially good was staggered. Both Anne and I have felt this deeply, but Anne can release herself with tears. With me there are no more tears to come after those four days for this man . . . this symbol. He was young, vigorous and alive. Mostly alive.  In all the human qualities of weakness and strength that that implies. But I knew him as an image of my generation, whether he was or not.

In late afternoon, along the East Lake Road, with the sun a vague remembrance in orange and blue, a gray mist settles over the lake and the farmland. This is the most beautiful area in the country.              Color comes through the gray as an emerging force, an energy of ahinsa.

      In the Rig Veda the search for reality is one between sat, reality -a place of sunshine, warmth and light, and asat, unreality - a dark, cold region infested with demons. The universe is made up of these two areas. The shape of the universe is an egg with the top half being sat and the bottom asat. Reality is ruled by rta or cosmic law and unreality, by antra or no cosmic law. The sat is liberal and energetic; the asat is conservative and in a state of total inertia.  Yama, the first man, lived in sat; his heaven was at the top of sat (the egg) and his hell below. Indra, man^'s champion, battled Vrtra and won so that sat and asat were divided for men. Indra had the help of the Aditry, the beings for progressiveness, and they defeated the Danava, the beings for inertia‑ conservatism and bondage. But the one god Indra was soon questioned and Ka, meaning who, Prajapati, lord of the Brahman, and Brhaspati, lord of wisdom, followed in the succeeding millennium. At last, the personalized god was replaced by Tad Ekam, ^"that one^", in the Upanisads, and by Time and A Frame. The dominate idea though was Tad Ekam. Braham, the universal self, mingled with Atman, the individual self, until one was each and both were one. Man^'s primary end was pure consciousness without anything but itself to be conscious of.  Man job in life was to be conscious of the three states of consciousness.

    ^{To Find Peace One Must Begin to Live Each Moment:  A LETTER TO MYSELF}

   ^"The more educated a man, the less he knows he knows.^" –Chinese Proverb

    The sky has washed the atmosphere with light. It is awakened morning, no longer struggling with the sleep of night in the corners of its eyes. Does morning have fingers and hands to rub away the sleep of night?

     When I was half-awake and half-asleep, I knew that I knew what this letter was all. about. Now that I am awake with the morning, I know that I did not know.

      Well, anyway, I thought that I would write you. My letters have been few and far between. There is no wisdom here, just myself out front, swinging on those things that give me pleasure that I send on to you.

     Give my love to all those you love.

     One boy in the back of the room is tapping his head with the 'holding up' hand to the music.

      The president of the Bank eternally is sitting with his arms folded in self-assurance. His wife, playing with her 1920 necklace in a nervous, frustrated motion, silently sits assuming attention in her ankle length dinner dress.

      A young scientist leans forward to challenge the music that assaults him.

      One striking face, placid and clam, her hair pulled tight and black around her thin face, a face filled with the lines of thought and knowledge and, also uniquely, understanding.  It is a studied face, sculptural and daring.

     (I wonder how many enjoy the concert? I wonder who just comes because it is the ^"cultural event of the year")?

     The children though are alternately squirming and filled with open-faced excited wonder.

     (It is surprising how many times a husband and wife who have lived together for a long time begin to look like each other.)

The Methodist pastor and his wife have a stoic expression of resignation, yet somehow alert resignation.       The hard lines are softened by grace, pity and wear - a saintly-defeated face.

     The clustered three old plump vultures of the town, one in fur, one in purple with a feathered hat, and one in all black with a gold flower on her turbaned hat. They appear as the Notre Dame gargoyles out for a night of 'culture'. The one in the fur wipes her nose as the Stravinsky measures-shrill-wail of the piccolo parts her half‑consciousness. They are the Three Graces grown old and worn-out with museum-use. They watch the others around them critically as they spin their fates.

      And one man sleeps as his wife assumes the guise of attention.

      Two fingers holding up the cheek and pushing the skin into a raised curve.

      The impatience of shifting on one^'s seat.

      The rubbing of the nose, scratching the face, the chin, the gesture to the mouth.

      The beginning of coughs as the time moves toward the completion of Schubert.

      The rubbing of the eyes, rolling the program.

It is fascinating to watch the world go by as moment roll into moments. It gives one a peace that can only be compared to the hush silent between notes in a symphony. Maybe that is what Peace really is: a hushed silence where the mind, spirit and body are at rest and one with the music of the universe.