Toward Peaceful Co-Existence?

Go peacefully and quietly amid the excitement and extremes of life. Remember, there is peace in silence.

As far as possible and without surrendering your soul, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly. Listen closely to others, even the seemingly dull and ignorant, for they too have their own story to share with those who will listen.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons for, though they may mean well, they are annoyance and unhappiness to your spirit.

Be yourself! If you compare yourself to others, you may become vain and bitter. There will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career and efforts, however humble. They are like a treasure in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery and deception. Let not this blind you to what virtue there is in others. Many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of good examples and heroism.

Whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of this present life, keep peace with your soul. If you work for someone, by all means work diligently work for them, and courteously represent them, or else the winds of change may come along and blow you away, and you may never know why.

Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love for, in the face of all spiritual fruitlessness and disenchantment, it is perennial as the grass and spring flowers.

Take kindly the counsel of the years. Gracefully surrender the things of your youth.

Nurture strength of spirit sufficient to sustain you through times of sudden misfortune, but do not distress yourself with imaginings of irreparable harm and woefulness. Many fears are born out of fatigue, loneliness, and frustration.

Observe a wholesome, divine-like discipline rooted in the principles and mental disposition of the godly and the godlike, and be gentle with yourself and all people. You and they are each one a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You and they have a right to be here and, whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with "God," whatever you perceive God to be.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. So, be at peace, be cheerful, and strive to be happy.

~ adapted from Desiderata, Max Ehrmann, 1927 (1872-1945)