This past week I had the privilege of traveling to Vienna to explore peace history and celebrate the memory of Bertha von Suttner on the anniversary of her death. During this experience, the words of Friedrich Nietzche crossed both in my readings and in my mind. His words pierced a part of my soul and changed this entire experience for me. Everyday now I make sure to tell myself, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”.
For me, this week was a week to develop my ability and my desire for survival when facing animosity. I have found that to give peace to the world, I must also allow it to encompass my personal being as well. Viktor Frankl survived hell and through reading his works and developing an understanding of his ideas, I am determined that during this previous week I have developed skills to not only survive, but to thrive in peace.
I chose my paper topic on the issue of survivors’ roles in the International Criminal Court because as a survivor of sexual violence, I wanted to learn more about my experience on an international level. Because of this, the most important thing I learned from this week was that peace starts within. I cannot be a person of peace until I start to accept my experience and forgive myself for my sexual assault. I cannot keep asking myself why I let it happen or other daunting questions that leave me awake at night. I learned most importantly, this past week that I have a why to live, and I won’t let anyone, including my assailant, take that away from me.
One of my heroes, Maya Angelou, wrote a poem titled, Phenomenal Woman. In one part she writes,
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeFfhH83_RE
Her words to me, as with Nietzche, stay with me as I stumble and fall on the road to inner peace as I face down the injustices that I have experienced in my life. Her words were with me as I reflected on peace in Vienna. Frankl writes, “The salvation of man is through love and in love” and from what I have found is that in order to give your life to the love of others, one must first love oneself.
When I was in the city of Vienna I saw how proud the buildings were. They stood tall and survived adversity. Even the buildings didn’t crumble when they faced the wrath of the Nazis. I saw the carved out women warriors who survived by their conviction. In the shelter of the tall buildings and the historic art, I developed a core that kept me from crumbling again.
I learned about the movement of the 1,000 Peace Women, an organization that works to celebrate women who work and have worked to create a society of peace. I am excited to be able to learn about these women who are so often unheard of because of their status as women. I learned that they are worth something and in return, so am I.
http://www.1000peacewomen.org/en/
I also learned about another organization, Peacewomen.org, that “promotes the role of women in preventing conflict, and the equal and full participation of women in all efforts to create and maintain international peace and security. PeaceWomen facilitates monitoring of the UN system, information sharing and the enabling of meaningful dialogue for positive impact on women’s lives in conflict and post-conflict environments”.
http://peacewomen.org/pages/about-us
This week, though often surrounded by crowds of people, was a time for introspection for me. I’m taking away that I have a duty to myself and through respecting myself, I can fully commit to the efforts in creating a better world.
Songwriter Ray LaMontagne produced a song with the lyrics, “war is not the answer, the answer is within you”. Peace, though it seems vast in scale starts small, it starts with me finding peace within me.
While international peace may be a complex system of dialogues and diplomacy where there decisions are ambiguous, I have found that to even begin solving international disputes, one must find peace within themselves. The ICC cannot expect to enlighten the world with peace and justice unless the individual person is enlightened with peace and justice. It all starts from within.