Make peace with ourselves

People often hold the belief that peace comes after conflict settlement. We favor one side while despising the other. And still, seek for a mutually beneficial solution. However, I would like to argue that peace comes after conflict awareness. More precisely, we should be conscious of the very existence of conflict within ourselves. After that, we may have a chance to make peace with ourselves.

The reason why a conflict develops within us is partially due to the structure of our brains. To put it in a simple way, our brains are divided into two separate parts called right and left brain hemispheres, respectively. The right hemisphere governs our emotions; whereas the left hemisphere, on the other hand, governs our reason. As a result, it is easy for us to notice the fact that our decisions often reveal our emotions as well as reason at the same time. Take procrastination for example. In keeping with our reason, we know that we should hand in our homework on time. Yet, we still put things off as a result of choosing to please our emotions. Therefore, because of the different functions of right and left hemispheres, we usually seem to feel struggling within.

For this reason, we should fairly treat opposite ideas within us as compliment rather than battle. Just like two sides of the same coin, two opposite ideas actually create a balanced decision. Again, recall the example of procrastination. We keep putting things off while, at the same time, being 100 percent sure of the exact deadline. (It’s) a typical struggle between reason and emotions. Instead of blaming ourselves for being total procrastinators, we’d better take full responsibility for the schedule we fell behind and put extra effort to catch up. In other words, try to balance what we should do on the one hand and what we feel like doing on the other in order to create a reasonable decision.

In conclusion, I’d like to restate, peace comes after conflict awareness. If we want to make peace with ourselves, we should, first of all, accept the fact that conflicts or opposite ideas are truly THERE, which are biologically “preprogrammed”. Besides, we should never be partial to either of the opposite ideas. Rather, we balance them. Then, freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts will surely come afterwards.