Give Peace a Chance

Every year the Catholic Church celebrates World Day of Peace on January 1 and the Pope delivers an address related to Peace.  Since it’s the beginning of 2012, I’ve been thinking about World Peace, or the lack of it.

Recently I’ve been reading Come to Think of It, a book of commentaries that Daniel Schorr delivered on National Public Radio for many years.  Every year, beginning in 1991, he had a commentary toward the end of December in which he spoke about how Peace on Earth had fared in the year that was coming to an end.  Each year, from his perspective, Peace had not fared very well on this Earth.  In 2002, he finished his commentary this way:  “Sorry about the gloomy note.  Maybe there’ll be a happier assessment of peace on Earth this time next year.  If not, I’m going to beg off doing these wrap-ups.”  He finally gave up in December of 2005, in a commentary that started “This is my last contribution of the year to All Things Considered, and so allow me to say good-bye 2005 and good riddance.”

For 2011, score one for Peace on Earth with the end of the war in Iraq and all US soldiers coming home.  However, we’re still fighting in Afghanistan and the news is telling us about a possible conflict with Iran, which is threatening to block oil shipments if additional sanctions are put in place against it.  Those are only the conflicts the US is involved in.  There are plenty of other armed conflicts we’re not a party to.

Having spent a fair amount of time this holiday season with my cute and delightful grandchildren, I’ve come up with an idea that I think might work.  My suggestion involves planting children, between the ages of newborn and four years, in places where people in power are making decisions about whether to get along with others or stir things up.

Have you been in places where cute little kids are doing their thing?  They attract people’s attention and inevitably bring a smile to their faces.  Whether it’s an eight month old showing a big bright smile, or an eighteen month old talking animatedly with words that only he understands, or a two and a half year old making all the adults with her copy her as she dances around.  I hadn’t been around young children much for a long time.  But, since we’ve had grandchildren, I’ve become much more aware of this phenomenon.  If you don’t spend much time around them, take my word for it – little kids change things.  All they have to do is walk into the room in all their cuteness and people start to smile.  So, if they were just around everywhere, I think people would lighten up.  The adults’ moods would change and they’d make better (more peaceful) decisions.

Two caveats – I think the kids need to be (as I said above) between the ages of newborn and four years and I think they need to be someone else’s kids.  I mention this last thing because little kids are not always being cute; sometimes they’re cranky because they’re not getting their own way.  But, if they’re someone else’s kids, we seem to be able to tolerate that more than with our own.  Actually, as I think about it, it might work best if they are grandchildren of the adults in the room.  We grandparents seem to think that everything our grandkids do is cute.

Anyhow, that’s my suggestion.  It might not work but, hey, I think it’s worth a try!