The presence of violence and weapons in our world is a reaction to fear. The action we can take is to vision. To visualize a world without aggression or weapons. To me, that is practical. What is impractical is the status quo of “They have guns, so I need guns to protect myself.” That is a story.

Can anyone defend the presence of guns in the world without going into fear? The idea that you need to protect or defend yourself has its root in fear and separation.

Our world is focused on duality. Us and them. Light and dark. When we change the lens of our perception to oneness (We), we see that every single person on the planet wants two things – peace and love. This unites us. What we are used to – and accept – is that killing people to attain the peace you want is OK. It isn’t. Killing each other is absolutely insane.

How we can do that is to drop out of all fights. What would that change in our immediate reality? To begin to interrupt the moments in our lives in which we get impatient, fearful, angry or intolerant. That involves us letting go of stories we create.

Last year, I was searching for a new apartment. While standing outside of a building with a vacancy at night, a young man walked up and aggressively questioned my being there. In his story, I posed a threat to the safety of the occupants and he was defending them and himself. In my story, I was waiting for an app listed on the vacancy sign to download so I can see what this apartment looks like and apply for it. After recognizing that this man was fixated on his story and in fight or flight mode (i.e. agitated and not listening to me at all), I chose to leave. I dropped out of the story and chose peace for myself. Being “right” in that situation didn’t matter. Dropping out of a potential conflict did matter to me.

An 18 year-old kid and a police officer in Ferguson, MO both got caught up in their stories and one of them had a gun. The officer was frightened enough to use the gun. They both perfectly played their parts in dance of duality, as there was an us and a them. It is likely they both feel/felt that they were “right”.

We have an opportunity right now to choose something different than accepting violence as the accepted norm.

What does a world without violence look like to you? What is the vision like?