The Peace You’re Chasing Is Already Here
If you’re like most people, you’ve spent a good chunk of your life chasing peace.
You’ve tried a few things—maybe a meditation app that lasted about a week or a self-help book that’s still sitting on your nightstand. You’ve reorganized the garage (again) or tackled a closet, hoping a little more order on the outside might bring calm on the inside. Maybe you’ve even decided that the answer lies in just staying busier so there’s less time to think.
Yet peace still feels slippery, doesn’t it? Like a mirage that moves just out of reach every time you get close.
We convince ourselves that peace will show up when we fix a few more things. Maybe it’s the job that’s too demanding or the neighbor’s dog that never stops barking. Maybe it’s something internal—a bad habit, an unresolved regret, or a nagging sense of “not enough.”
Here’s the truth most of us don’t want to hear: the circumstances might never change. Jobs will still be demanding, dogs will bark, and sometimes we won’t have all the answers.
But here’s the thing—it doesn’t matter.
The other day, I shanked my golf ball into a pond. Classic. It wasn’t a deep pond, and the ball landed just near the edge. I could see it clearly, sitting there in the water. But when I reached my club in to retrieve it, the water instantly clouded, and the ball disappeared from view. I tried again, this time stirring the water even more in my determination to grab it. The harder I tried, the murkier it got.
Sound familiar? That’s what chasing peace looks like. We keep reaching, stirring, and striving, hoping that with just a bit more effort, things will finally clear up. But it doesn’t work like that.
Eventually, I gave up. I stepped back, let the water settle, and there it was—my golf ball, perfectly visible again.
Peace of mind works the same way. Beneath the swirling thoughts and endless to-do lists, there’s already a steady calm. You don’t have to find it or create it.
You just have to stop stirring.
What if you didn’t need to fix yourself to feel at ease? What if peace wasn’t something you achieved but something you noticed when you let go of the chase?
So take a breath. Drop the stick—or the golf club. Let the water settle. It turns out, peace isn’t something you chase—it’s something you notice.
By the way, it doesn’t help to angrily throw your golf club into the pond… I tried that already! It brought back neither my ball nor my peace of mind.