The road to peace and unity with others is met with many forks. My own desires and expectations can lead me in a direction that breaks unity and relationship. Your actions can cause me to justify veering away from you and walking down a road with my back turned to you. When this happens, the discord that exists likely causes a disruption of internal and external peace. And this discord can be perpetuated by justification and delusion. My own anger can easily lead me to put more effort into discord instead of focusing on maintaining a healthy relationship.
Sustaining and nurturing healthy relationships takes time and effort. If both people aren’t working together, they can be torn apart. Effort may look different and love might be expressed differently, but a lack of effort can spin into broken relationship. Because of my own frustration, I can walk down a road that causes more hurt. Because of your apathy, I can put up a roadblock that perpetuates division. All of these disruptions within relationship aren’t easy to heal, but they begin with one simple acknowledgement: I need to come back to myself.
When we’ve left each other, we’ve abandoned ourselves. We are not meant to exist with strife and division. We are not designed to cause each other pain and harm. Whether it be to strangers or those closest to us, every action and word we say should be maintaining and nurturing peace and unity. Since we will inevitably fail at this, we have to be self-aware enough to wake up and return to who we are by returning to each other. Regardless of who caused the hurt, I can initiate the beginning of healing. We both need to desire to return to peace, but I can take the first step back on the road to each other.
Say sorry as soon as you know you should. Don’t wait to acknowledge your desire for peace. Waiting to return to peace is actually an investment in division. We can easily invest in harm and hurt. We can invest in pain and discord. Take the energy you’re putting into your own anger and expectations and put it into healing. Chances are, that will take time too.
It takes courage to acknowledge that you’ve disrupted the peace between you and someone else. It takes even more courage to let them know you want to heal the divide. Returning to peace is a process that begins with your own awareness that you’ve left your true self. Once you come back to yourself, return to each other. If the other person isn’t ready to return to you, take a courageous step towards pursuing peace with that.
Walk away from division and get back on the road to peace and unity. Courageously wake up when you’ve abandoned yourself and others.