The Man Who Walked for Peace

I still hurt.

I don't know how long I will feel this way. Tomorrow might be different. It might change nothing. But tonight I want something simpler than happiness. Peace.

At the park, a place I have visited many times, I spoke with a man I had seen walking there before. His name was Zach, like my son.

I asked him why he walked all around that enormous park.

He said he just wanted peace.

That answer stayed with me.

I had been flying my Mini B and FW200 in the wind. Somewhere in that same beautiful place, another man was walking, asking for nothing more than peace.

Maybe peace is not something that arrives only when every problem has been solved. Maybe it is something we can seek while the problems still walk beside us.

Why does love hurt? Why is understanding another person so difficult? Old wounds remember. Sometimes one moment touches ten earlier moments and all the pain comes back.

I am still sad. Sometimes the tears arrive before the words. Perhaps not everything meaningful arrives as a complete sentence.

I am afraid of the unknown. Of tomorrow, of who will stay, of what life will become.

Sometimes happiness itself feels unfamiliar, as though I have spent so long preparing for storms that sunlight feels suspicious.

I wanted something peaceful. Not perfect. Peaceful.

Maybe peace is not the absence of the journey.

Maybe peace is learning how to walk through it.