This afternoon, I found myself thinking about being a peacekeeper.
No, I'm not talking about the kind of peacekeeper they send into war zones to help maintain ceasefires, I'm talking about the personality type of somebody whose main focus in life is to keep the peace, with friends, with family, with partners and so forth.
It is a role I have found myself assuming an awful lot, both during my childhood and youth as well as during my adult life.
I suppose it's not a bad thing to be — after all, there's a lot of strife in this world of ours — but if you get too involved, you always run the risk of losing yourself, and giving yourself away in service of keeping the peace.
When I was a kid, I often found myself in the unenviable role of being the peacekeeper between my parents. My parents didn't necessarily openly fight, that they had a lot of disagreements that turned into them giving each other the cold shoulder and not talking and I found myself ”carrying messages” between them. In retrospect, expecting your 8-year old kid to be the go-between and your relationship is not exactly healthy behavior.
I also often found myself in the role of peacekeeper among my friends at school. There were a lot of the kids who just really seemed to be into fighting, and I was really not into fighting, so I often found myself trying to keep the peace and trying to make people stop fighting.
Later on in life I was often the peacekeeper not only in my own marriage but sometimes in other people's marriages.
I look at all that, and find myself wondering why I'm so attached to keeping the peace. The closest I can come to a reason is that there is a more useful and sensible approach to solving our differences in life than to fight about them.
Many years ago I read a number of self help books which suggested — among other things — that human beings tend to have fundamental strategic life orientations to how they move through the world. Some seek control, some seek dominance, some seek solitude, some seek connection, and some — such as myself — try to always maintain inner peace.
I find it very difficult to remain calm and balanced when people in my environment are having aggressive disagreements.
In case it sounds like I'm some kind of rollover or "doormat" who never argues with anybody about anything that is definitely not true! I just don't think every little difference we have is the reason to break into a huge argument or even have an outright fight.
Where is I'm pretty sure my tendency to seek peace in my environment is an inborn trait, it was also encouraged and probably strengthened by the times I spent with my auntie at her summer house, which was a very peaceful place and she was a very peaceful person. By being around her a lot during my formative years, I came to value peace as a sort of "psychological oasis" I could spend time in as opposed to getting embroiled in the rather loud chaos that otherwise tended to surround me.
Ironically, I have met very few truly peaceful people in my adult life.
It is a frustrating personality "placement" sometimes, particularly when you encounter someone who seems to enjoy "fighting, for fighting's sake."
But you don't always get what you want...!
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Created at 2025.02.01 01:04 PST
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