War Exists Because War Exists WithIn AsThru Us All

"Only the dead have seen the end of war" -- Plato

What if the most dangerous disease we'll ever face as humanity, isn't biologic? What if the greatest disease we face is our insatiable need to be right?

We've continued to fight and kill for millennia, having long ago proved war's inability to satiate this need? Is this disease without cure?

I ask because I have it too. I notice it often. In moments, it feels all but incurable.

Recently, I observed a symptom of this disease, uncontrollable anger. Not mine, but another's. Perhaps you too have been witness to such an incident.

A man was yelling at a waitress in a restaurant, demanding that his meal be free. The waitress was literally in tears, no longer able to hold back the emotion and the surprise of dealing with such anger so early in the morning.

The angry man had all but finished his breakfast but was verbally bashing this woman, "this is the worst food I've ever eaten..." and "I simply refuse to pay for "such lousy food and service."

The waitress patiently waited for the man to stop yelling. Finally, he stopped long enough for the waitress to quickly say, "fine... now please leave before I call the police."

Call the police?!?" He scorned. "You do that! You call the police! And I'll tell them how you steal good money from people by giving them the worst food in town!"

Now, what was truly troubling this man, undoubtedly wasn't the quality of the food. At this point, he simply needed, beyond even his ability to express otherwise, to be right. I would offer that it was his need to be right that was the source of his public expression of anger. It had nothing to do with the waitress. He did however pull her and everyone present into feeling anger. An anger that lives in us all.

Even now, sitting many moments beyond this observation, I can still feel the anger. So, what is it that made this man so angry? What truly motivated him to simply explode at the slightest provocation? And what deeply rooted emotional trigger did his need to be right set in motion?

Admittedly, observing this experience caused me great humility because sometimes I too live with the symptom of anger as an expression of my own need to be right. I can remember moments when I wasn't the kindest, and worse, moments where I probably made someone feel as the waitress felt that day.

Perhaps this is a much more reflective story than it appears. Is it possible that this is true too of our joy and happiness, in equal proportion, as it is to the world of anger and war that so defines humanity?

For war to exist in our space-time, with the ever growing prominence we're living with it, it must exist, at some level, in each in every one of us, for it to exist at all.

This we could either accept with humility and begin to make changes withinasthru our own hearts or continue to deny it, thus giving it even more power. What we resist, persists. But that which we look at, really look at in the reflective mirror of own humanity, disappears.

We did after all, in all our humanity, create war. Are we then not the only possible solution to its disappearance? Again, that which we deny lives on. That which we can accept as IS, withinasthru Self, can again return to the nothingness from which it arrived.

I challenge you today to be the true leader you are. I invite any one who has ever exploded with anger at another, or at one's own self, to look at the anger within your own heart and begin to forgive yourself for every misperception that allows the anger to live. Look at directly. Own the anger. Release your own need to be right.

Be willingness enough then, to forgive yourself completely of this disease and be witness to how the anger which has lived withinasthru your entire life, begins to diminish. This is not only the cure to the disease of needing to be right, but it may be the cure to war to a new form of leadership.

You in?

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." --Gandhi