Random thoughts about peace

Last night on the way back from San Antonio, I sat in the back of the car with Henry because he was rather displeased. I was able to get him to sleep pretty soon, and then I just sat back and watched I-35 zip by and thought about peace. I just started reading this book, Parenting for a Peaceful World by Robin Grille, which so far has been pretty amazing. I'm only a little ways in, but the main tenet of the book is that advances in freedom and peace throughout history correlate directly to how society takes care of its children, and that care of children is a major piece of the puzzle with regards to steering our planet off of the violent course that it's currently on. But I was sitting there in the car feeling all good for getting the baby to sleep, and I started thinking about what a peaceful world actually looks like, and my first thought was that it was a world without violence, but then I thought, well that describes what a peaceful world is not, but what about what it is? And when I start thinking like that, my brain goes into a place where words seem laughably inadequate to describe what I'm envisioning, but the best I could come up with was that a peaceful world is a place where every human being is nurtured, where everyone's best is allowed to flourish, and where violence is not even an option on the table when it comes to conflict resolution because we've realized that to strike another is to strike ourselves. And then I started thinking about this thing that a wise friend of mine said one time, about how every person is an entire universe, which then caused me to think about that one scene in the first Star Wars (episode IV, the real first Star Wars) where they blow up Princess Leia's home planet right in front of her, and I thought to myself "What total bullshit. She barely even protests! If somebody was about to blow up everyone you know, wouldn't you be throwing a hysterical shitfit? Yet another reason why George Lucas is an asshole."