How Did Peace Become a Private Project?
Last November, in the inaugural edition of Peace Notes, I asked a deceptively simple question:
What is peace?
Last November, in the inaugural edition of Peace Notes, I asked a deceptively simple question:
Together, we traced the word back through its history. We discovered that peace was never simply the absence of conflict, nor was it originally understood as a private feeling that each of us was expected to manufacture alone. At its roots, peace spoke of agreements, relationships, and the conditions that allowed people to live together. Peace was something created and sustained between people before it was ever experienced within them.
That conversation has stayed with me. Not because I believe we answered the question, but because another one quietly emerged from it.
How did peace become a private project?
At some point, almost without noticing, we began to relocate peace from our relationships and communities into our individual lives. Increasingly, we came to believe that if we were not peaceful, the solution lay in becoming calmer, more resilient, more mindful, more intentional. Peace became something we were expected to achieve within ourselves.
The responsibility quietly shifted. Instead of asking what kind of families, workplaces, neighbourhoods, and communities help people live peacefully together, we began asking a different question:
Why can’t I find peace within myself?
It is a subtle shift. It is also a profound one
The change did not happen overnight.
There was no cultural announcement declaring that peace was now an individual responsibility. Instead, the change arrived quietly. We became busier. Work followed us home. Technology made us constantly reachable. Communities became more transient. The pace of life accelerated.
Alongside these changes came another movement—one that continues to shape how many of us think about ourselves.
Wellness.
Today, wellness surrounds us. We are encouraged to meditate, practise mindfulness, journal, exercise, breathe deeply, disconnect, eat well, spend time in nature, cultivate gratitude, and build resilience. There is genuine wisdom in many of these practices. They can help us recover, reflect, regulate our emotions, and navigate difficult seasons of life.
But somewhere along the way, I wonder if something else happened.
Have we quietly begun to confuse wellness with peace? The two are not the same.
Wellness concerns the individual. It asks how I care for myself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Peace has always been something larger.
Peace certainly lives within us, but it has never belonged exclusively to us. It emerges in our relationships, in our families, in our organizations, in our neighbourhoods, and in the countless agreements—spoken and unspoken—that allow us to live together with dignity and respect.
Perhaps that is why so many people continue searching for peace despite becoming increasingly skilled at caring for themselves.
This is not an argument against wellness. Far from it.
Many of the practices we associate with wellness have real value. They can steady us during uncertainty, help us understand our reactions, and create the space needed to respond thoughtfully rather than impulsively. They may even help us endure circumstances that would otherwise overwhelm us.
But I find myself wondering whether we have gradually asked these practices to do something they were never intended to do.
Have we come to expect individual wellness to compensate for the absence of healthy relationships, supportive communities, wise leadership, or humane workplaces?
When a workplace is exhausting, we are encouraged to become more resilient.
When our lives become fragmented, we are encouraged to become better at managing stress.
When loneliness grows, we are encouraged to spend more time working on ourselves.
These responses are not wrong. But they leave one important question largely untouched.
What conditions make peace possible in the first place?
Throughout my career, I have rarely been interested in changing people.
I have been far more interested in changing the conditions within which people live and work.
Healthy relationships do not emerge by accident.
Trust does not emerge by accident.
Psychological safety does not emerge by accident.
Neither, I suspect, does peace.
They arise where people experience respect, fairness, belonging, meaningful dialogue, and shared responsibility. They grow where differences can be explored without fear, where people know they matter, and where communities recognize that everyone’s well-being is interconnected.
Perhaps peace has always been less about perfect individuals than healthy relationships, and less about mastering ourselves than learning to live well together.
That possibility changes the question.
Perhaps the question is not:
“How do I become more peaceful?”
Perhaps it is:
“What kind of world helps people experience peace?”
Those are very different questions. One places the responsibility almost entirely on the individual. The other invites all of us—leaders, families, neighbours, organizations, communities—to consider the part we play in creating the conditions where peace can flourish.
I don’t pretend to have the answer. In fact, I suspect this question is much larger than a single article can contain.
But perhaps that is exactly why it matters.
If peace has gradually become a private project, perhaps our task is not to abandon the practices that help us care for ourselves. Perhaps our task is to remember something we have quietly forgotten.
Peace has always lived between us as much as within us.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s where we need to begin looking again.