Strongest words for peace come from mouths of babesBy Lisa Earle McLeodwww.forgetperfect.com Your kids are watching you, and they’re observing the rest of the universe as well. The stunning clarity with which they can assess things often amazes me. My daughter recently wrote an essay for a book titled “If Women Ruled the World” (Inner Oceans 2004), a collection of essays to which I contributed. When I was preparing my piece, I suggested my daughter submit one as well. Imagine my shock when my 11-year-old, who previously specialized in fantasy tales about magical cats, produced a piece that summed up the lunacy of war in two short paragraphs. She wrote it in about an hour, with absolutely no help at all from her mother. I returned home from a lecture trip last spring and found it laying on my desk. Political leaders can yammer on all they like about how complicated things are, but I think she hits the nail on the head: Our best creations would last beyond age 18 By Elizabeth McLeod, age 11 I believe if women ruled the world, we would all learn from an early age that the job of every human being is to improve the Earth. There would not be wars and bombings of innocent people. Women know what it means when the news says, “Two people were killed in Iraq.” They can imagine how the mother felt to have her miracle destroyed. That is what war is, when you think about it: destruction of the millions of miracles women have made. It takes about 8.25 years of a woman’s actual physical labor to raise an 18-year-old person. A child takes 100 percent of the mother’s time the first two years, 50 percent of her time the next six years, and about 25 percent of her time from ages 9 to 18, for a total of 8.25 years of labor. Multiply 8.25 by the thousands killed in war and you have billions of years of actual woman’s labor put to waste in one war. You see, women get that number and shake their heads in disgust. They know the value of those years and the pain of the next 50 years, living with a broken heart. I couldn’t even fathom where she got the idea until I remembered our recent trip to France. Besides doing the tourist gawk at the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and all the other beautiful things first-timers see in Paris, we also visited memorials to World War I and II. As we watched the grainy footage of Adolf Hitler and his goose-stepping troops, she commented on how young all the boys looked. When we learned that a quarter of all French men between 18 and 30 — about 1.3 million of them — were killed in World War I, I was embarrassed that I couldn’t even accurately describe the cause of it. Later in Holland, as we stood in the Anne Frank house, we marveled at the power of a writer as we realized that more people had read Anne Frank’s words than had read Hitler’s. We discussed why strong, angry voices appeal to fear and bring out the worst in people, yet small, truthful expressions can touch humans at their core. As we talked about how great writers can shape our perspective on history, I didn’t quite realize I was speaking with one at the time. It took a kid to point out that the emperor had no clothes on. Maybe it’s going to take a few kids to point out what we adults know, but are too afraid to say out loud: War is nothing but one mother’s child killing another one. You can put as patriotic a face on it as you like, but when People magazine runs a list of 831 dead human beings in their Best and Worst of 2004 issue, the secret is out. We’ve been killing each other since the dawn of time, and it’s not working any better now than it did then. I used to pray for peace, but now I’m praying for some great minds to come up with better ways to solve our problems. As we celebrate the birth of the “Prince of Peace,” I wish we could reach into the heart of every mother’s child and create a different vision for our future. My dream for my own child is that, 60 years from now, as she sits old and gray on her front porch, her granddaughter approaches and asks, “Grandma, did people really used to kill each other?” And as my daughter will describe, in her shaky and wavering voice, the thing they used to call “war,” she will say, “People used to organize big groups for the sole purpose of attacking each other. They thought it was the only way to protect their values. But we’re smarter now so we don’t do that any more.” The world’s children are watching us and they’re internalizing a core set of beliefs that will be very difficult for them to change when they grow up. Anne Frank said, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” I am both humbled and amazed by her words and the words my own child has written. I am awed to think that I may raising a future world leader, but then I quietly realize — we all are. Peace on Earth to every mother’s child. May you do goodwill with your mother’s most amazing creation. Lisa Earle McLeod is a syndicated columnist, a nationally recognized speaker and the author of “Forget Perfect™: Finding Joy, Meaning, and Satisfaction in the Life You’ve Already Got and the YOU You Already Are.” (Penguin/Putnam) She has been featured in Real Simple, Essence, and The New York Times and seen on Good Morning America, Lifetime and FOX. Contact Lisa at www.ForgetPerfect.com. Editors: If you’d like to run Forget Perfect™ in your paper contact Lisa@ForgetPerfect.com. Column must include byline and photo.  |
