Peace in our Daily life

Most people think that peace is very abstract thing. Furthermore peace is regarded simple as an opposite of the state of war and because we don't have the state of war around us in Europe why should we bother about it? Why should we do something about an issue that we have already achieved?

Well, this definition for peace is not correct. Peace is something we need to actively work for every day. How should we do it? I think the answer is twofold: Firstly we need to contemplate our own behavior and attitude towards others and transform our arrogance, greed and ignorance into valuable action. Secondly we need to engage ourselves in dialog with others to try to understand the heart of the other person in order to convey our own thoughts correctly to the other person. The aim of this kind of dialog is to elevate the life state of the other person and speak out for justice. Our determined and respectful words can touch the other person's heart deeply and change the course of his or her day or even the whole life.

My Pledge

It all started with a vow, a pledge. I was 18 years old and it was time to decide whether to choose military service or non-military service since every young man in Finland have to go through this training period. The obvious patriotic choice would have been military service since my late grand father (whom I deeply respect) fought in the famous Winter war and was fully behind the common thought in Finland that we definitely need a strong military force in order to maintain our status of an independent nation.

Well.. What was my conclusion? I had just finished reeding a book written by Mr. Daisaku Ikeda where he referred to his mentor's, Josei Toda's words about the security of a nation: "In order to secure peace between two nations political and diplomatic ties are important but far more important is the friendship between individual citizens which will create a strong network of trust." This statement was decisive. I decided to choose non-military service and furthermore to dedicate my life to build this network of friendship in the area of the Gulf of Finland where Russian, Estonian and Finnish people trust each other, have intensive co-operation in all fields of society like culture, science, business and education. It's up to us, individual citizens to make it happen. And it's up to me.