Peace isn't acquired. I'm not even sure one is born with it. It doesn't just come to you one day, in some sudden epiphany of, "Oh! So THIS is peace!"

It took me a couple of years to learn that.

It cannot be learned nor taught, only observed and pursued. I suppose it's more of something you... work towards? One actually must work to find peace within oneself, because in a world like ours, peace is certainly not the natural gravitating force. Anger is. Suffering is. Despair is.

So, where is Peace?

Honestly? I believe you have to dig deeper inside yourself to find it. You have to keep working at it -- and it is hard work, most of the time, especially during those times that aren't peaceful at all. Those times when you feel anger, suffering, and despair. But the thing to remember is that it's okay to experience that anger, suffering, and despair when you're on your way to finding peace within yourself. It doesn't mean you failed. It doesn't mean you have to start over, and it doesn't mean that you're lost. It just means that it's hard. Sometimes, it's even a battle, a very-much-so more real version of that kind of internal conflict you learn about in English class under that list for "Literary Terms".

But one has to remain aware. If you still feel that anger, suffering, and despair sometimes, that doesn't automatically mean that you haven't changed your self at all. I used to think that, and thinking that almost caused me to give up. But I now know that it's not true, and that my inner being has evolved so much. I've learned that it's actually possible to experience all the good emotions amidst the bad ones, as long as you don't let the bad ones take control of your time, your mind, your spirit, and your life. One has to learn how to let every bad emotion run its course, to allow each and every thought, good or bad, to enter one's mind unsuspectingly -- and then leave just as harmlessly. It's something that we're not naturally inclined to do; it is our human nature to indulge every emotion, and let ourselves get carried away.

But if one focuses on peace instead of the whole other spectrum of destructive emotions within oneself every day, if one doesn't give up, even during those un-peaceful times... one will eventually find that those times of turbulence and discontent... don't disappear. No, things don't just disappear in real life; truthfully, reality contains no magic. No, what one will actually discover is that all things... fade. Knowledge left unused fades, relationships abandoned die, and temptations refused will also disintegrate.

Eventually.

With time.

One will find that those un-peaceful times in life will not disappear but fade, until the point when those un-peaceful times hardly last a day, a couple of hours, a half hour, a minute. That point when one is no longer working to put oneself at peace -- one is peace. All the time. It's not a skill to be learned or taught; it is an awareness, gained only by first realizing it exists, then reaching for it, and then by practicing it every day until it becomes one's nature. Until it becomes something that is not practiced but lived.

At least, that's my take on it.... But what do I know? I'm still learning how to take my own medicine.