Inner peace

[Guest guest]

" All men seek peace first of all with themselves. That is necessary,

because we do not naturally find rest even in our own being. We have to

learn to commune with ourselves before we can communicate with other men and

with God. A man who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his

interior fighting into the society of those he lives with, and spreads a

contagion of conflict all around him. Even when he tries to do good to

others his efforts are hopeless, since he does not know how to do good to

himself. In moments of wildest idealism he may take it into his head to

make other people happy: and in doing so he will overwhelm them with his own

unhappiness. He seeks to find himself somehow in the work of making others

happy. Therefore he throws himself into the work. As a result he gets out

of the work all that he put into it: his own confusion, his own

disintegration, his own unhappiness. "

From No Man is an Island by Merton