No Peace, No Justice
“No justice, no peace!” How many times have we heard these chants among protestors advocating for social change? I myself can recall the times when I also joined into these chants, saddened by the need for them, but also inspired by the camaraderie towards the collective goal of healing our community. While I understood the power of such statements, I also wondered, “what happens if justice is not served? Does that mean that none of us get to experience peace? How is that fair to the collective?”
After reflection and taking a deeper dive into those questions, I realized that those questions only beget more questions for me-these questions are complex and require the inquirer to be able to clearly define things that somewhat feel ambiguous, such as what is justice, actually? What is actually peace?
Within this process, I realized that I needed to define these things. When I determined what peace meant for me in particular, I realized that I never wanted the behavior of others to disturb my sense of peace. Certainly, there were times in my life when the behavior of others did indeed disturb my peace, from experiencing childhood trauma which later on would spread to relational wounds. I wasn’t in control of what happened to me-people whom I trusted wounded me on a deep level and that eventually started that war within myself-I wanted justice. I wanted someone to right those wrongs. I wanted people to realize how they hurt me and make amends. I think it is natural to feel this way sometimes-in our minds, we want things resolved so that we can move on. However, sometimes focusing on the external need for justice blinds us from the internal opportunity for both peace and justice.
This is not to say that advocating for change is not important. Advocacy helps us bring about systemic changes that ultimately can help us experience even more peace within our communities and can help break generational trauma. However, if we only focus on achieving that sense of justice based upon the behaviors of others, we may find ourselves consistently in a place of internal unrest. If we devote our energy into ruminating over what others have done to us, we limit our capacity to create that peace that may ultimately create some form of justice, even if it may be unconventional.
So, I wonder what it might look like to flip the script and say, “no peace, no justice” to ourselves? If I determine that my peace is one of my highest priorities, how might my interactions with the world change? How might my relationships change?
By determining that we do have control over our own sense of peace, we empower ourselves to determine a new perspective on justice and frees us to focus on creating pathways that feel equitable and healing for ourselves. We may discover new ways to approach problems previously seemed unsolvable. We may discover that we can have those difficult discussions, even if we are unsure of how the other person might respond.
The journey to healing one’s self, families, and communities is a challenging one that requires addressing the head, the heart, the spirit and all of the relationships in between. We search for that hero that can make things right-but in all actuality, in the words of Mariah Carey “the hero [to attain peace and ultimate justice] is you.” Thus, perhaps the goal of achieving justice is ultimately choosing to experience peace. If you are interested in learning more about that journey, check out our current series on Compassionate Justice on Instagram (@fringegram) and also Facebook (Fringefam).
Wishing you peace,
Chante’