The never-ending hunt for peace 

During the childhood phase how simple it was that what we dreamt of was only love, peace, being true & natural. There was no burden, no responsibilities, no stress just us and the nature but still one aim and anticipation was there that when we grew up we will do this and we used to long for something.

This urge put in us, used to keep us motivated on the one hand but on the other hand it also put in us a sense of insecurity right from the childhood that will we able to do this or not? So the first part of us being not in peace starts right from here. 

• Growing Up: When Dreams Turned into Expectations 

Initially when we started growing up, the ambitions that were inside us as a dream started to become a part of our expectations as well as expectations of others. Now the things that used to fascinate us have started giving us a sense of insecurity.

For instance, a child once asked his dad to buy him a bicycle and he got it but the dream was that he will buy a bike one day but he will never know that right after buying the bike he will be in a sense of guilt either because of spending parent's money or buying himself on EMIs and even if he bought it on his own then also he will procarstinate of "have i made the wrong decision"? 

• Education and Ambition: The Race Begins 

Then the moment we begin to step inside the educational phase but not as a student but as a mean to achieve our dreams then this stress of ours get doubled and slowly and slowly we find ourselves as a contestant of a rat race which is once again skeptical and from now on we will just have to follow a certain line because it's the only mean that will take us to our dreams. I know it's a paradigm but not fully convinced i believe that this will definitely take us to the point where we will be a good human being and know our morality and limits. 

• Sacrificing our dreams 

Every child has his/her own hobby and to me the real profession is that in which we feel like we love to do it but the paradigm in our society has limited us to only few of the profession and hopes and to the society all the other things that we do are nothing but time waste. If i take the example particularly of Southeast Asia and Middle east  then here, only some professions like Civil servant, doctor, engineer and defence are considered for fitting into the criteria of being called as "successful", on the other hand in other countries we donot find such contradicting views and there every profession is respected and considered as a means of growing up and that in rational sense makes it peaceful. 

• The Promise of “Someday” 

The biggest lie is that of the promise of  "someday" that someday everything will be achieved by us, someday we will find peace somewhere, someday everyone will applaud us and someday everything will get better and better but when will that someday come, no one knows and to the extent of reality that someday will never come and someday will become eventually an "endday" and the chapter of our life will come to an end. 

• Marriage, Children and the Expanding Circle of Responsibilities 

Even if we achieve something whether it is what we thought of or not still the time we get married it doesn't remain to us only then we have the responsibilities of our better half and the relatives of better half and then our children but that's our moral value and nothing wrong in that but where did my life go or my dreams go. I might be understood as being in vanity while saying this but this is the ultimate truth. The life i dreamt of being independent, spending on my own etc, where did that go. 

• The pressure and load of the job 

Even if we get our dream job, does that guarantee that we will be at peace, the work pressure, the load of work, the pressure of work-life balance and everything , will that us help in remaining at peace? Not at all, so the question of peace ends here. The expectations of family, friends for not giving them the time and the duties and responsibilities of the job affects way more than we thought. 

• When Life Becomes a List of Things to Finish 

Eventually our life starts getting felt to us as a list of things that we need to finish irrespective of whether we love it or not. Everyday becomes a task and our life starts feeling to us as being monotonous and we feel like we are robots which again gets us stripped of our peace. Even if we gain more than we thing but those monetary things cannot satisfy our eternal and mental peace and no thing on earth can give us the peace we want unless & until we want peace for ourself all by us. 

• Looking Back: Where Did All Those Years Go? 

At the end we just look back and regret where did this all years and time go, what did i do? Where did all those people go whom i just wanted to make happy? Where did my money, stress go and you know what we can do for it? We can do nothing but regret and no effect or miracle is going to happen. This is the time i want to make available to my readers to remind them to live their life at the fullest and don't regret and don't stress. What is going to happen will happen one day or the other.  

If you face any insecurity, fear etc the best way to move forward is to face that, go one day and face that and you will see that it has gone, it was nothing and one antidote is there called as "PROKATALEPSIS". 

• Perhaps Peace Was Never at the Finish Line 

We spend our childhood dreaming of growing up and our adulthood chasing success, family, security and responsibilities, always believing that peace will come later. But life keeps moving, and one day we look back only to realise that the “later” we waited for never truly arrived. 

Perhaps the tragedy is not that life was meaningless, but that we were so busy preparing for tomorrow that we forgot to live today. Peace was never meant to be found at the end of life; perhaps it was meant to be experienced along the way. 

(The author is an independent researcher and columnist who writes on public policy, social change, youth affairs and governance. He can be reached at shahidhakla@shahidhakla.com )