Make Peace with Violence

Bombings. School shootings. Genocide. Over and over, the headlines tell the story of violence. And with each incident, there is a wave of shock, grief, and outrage. It can be overwhelming.

But it shouldn’t be. Not if you want to maximize your happiness in this world. To do that, you need to find a way to make peace with violence.

For me, martial arts has been very helpful in making peace with both sides of the violence coin—the harm that bad guys may bring to me, and the harm I may be forced to cause the bad guys. I know how talk like that can make me sound like a whack job…I used to feel the same way.

When I was 21, I attended a martial arts camp in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to meet a Tae Kwon Do teacher who was a clean-cut, clear-headed, and all-around nice guy. But when we discussed self-defense, he mentioned that he kept a club under the front seat of his car.

“Uh oh. He’s a whack job!” I thought. But then he said something brilliant.

“If something bad happens, there won’t be enough time to figure out what to do. You’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do before it happens.”

In short, he had made peace with violence. And I came to realize that it was because he had made peace with violence, that he was better able to be such a nice guy. Why?

When you take away fear and stress from your life, smiling is much easier.

If you think keeping a club under your car seat is wacky, how do you feel about fire drills? What if schools didn’t run fire drills? No plan of escape or preparation whatsoever.

You’d have chaos! Yes, a school exploding into flames is always going to be somewhat chaotic, but fire drills obviously give everyone a better chance of survival.

So, whether it’s an attack on your person, or an act of nature, how do you make peace with violence? There are two important steps…

How To Make Peace with Violence

First step. You must accept the fact that you— yes, you— can be a target of violence.

Second step. You must prepare for it. How far you decide to prepare is up to you, but as a rule, the more you accept and prepare for violence, the less you’ll fear it, the more you’ll be able to control it, and the less risk you’ll have of ever facing it.

When it comes to taking steps to protect ourselves, it’s easier to accept the impersonal dangers of a fire, earthquake, or hurricane over the more personal dangers of a mugging, rape, or murder. Which is completely understandable. No one wants to wake up thinking, “Hey! Maybe I’ll be killed at the office today!” Or “Hey! Maybe I’ll have to kill someone at the office today!”

Nice people don’t want to think of themselves as either a victim or a killer. It takes us into dark, uncomfortable territory. And yet, we must journey there.

Now, I’m not saying you have to turn your house into a fortress, carry weapons everywhere you go, or take hand-to-hand combat classes to be happy…paranoia doesn’t lead to happiness. For more on that, check out, “Paranoia Into Power.” But you also shouldn’t deny that violence is an inextricable part of the world.

You shouldn’t be shocked when something horrible happens, or have no idea what to do, or realize too late that when violence is the only way out of a bad situation, you’re not emotionally prepared to hurt anyone, so you wind up getting hurt instead.

Denying or ignoring violence only makes you more vulnerable to it.

The good news is, in the same way it doesn’t take much to fireproof your home, it doesn’t take much to prepare for violence. Even a small shift in attitude can drastically increase your peace of mind.

You remember the terrorist attack on 9/11. I remember taking a flight home from LA to NY for a wedding, just one month after the attack. As you can imagine, the vibe on the plane was anything but normal. Every time someone stood up, you could feel every passenger watching to see what was going on. You could also feel a willingness in every person to jump up and stop anybody who started trouble.

What was behind that vibe? Two things: 1) Everyone had accepted the possibility that violence could happen. 2) Everyone was prepared to do something to protect themselves. Which is the way it should always be!

If you don’t want to accept and prepare for violence, then, with all due respect—grow up! I may not want to accept that staying out in the sun all day will burn my skin or lead to skin cancer, but denying the truth won’t stop me from getting burned. We can’t afford to be childish about violence or good and evil.

• Fact: Bad guys exist.
• Fact: They may come after you.
• Fact: Your best chance to protect yourself and everything you care about is to make peace with both bad guys committing violence against you and you committing violence against them.

Here’s a test. When a horrific event occurs, if you say, “I can’t believe it! How could that happen?” recognize what you’re really saying is, “I still have not accepted that the world can be a scary place and evil people do evil things.” In short, “I have not made peace with violence.”

The truth is you’ve been hearing about tragic events since you could understand language. How many school shootings do you have to hear about before you make peace with the fact that violence can occur at schools? How many mass graves have to be discovered? How many terrorist bombings? How many murders and rapes?

Violence has always been part of our world and probably always will be. But it’s still a beautiful world.

So, take a breath… accept it… and let’s move on.

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t be affected by tragic events—we’re not robots. I’m suggesting we make peace with violence so we’ll be better able to move past the surprise and shock that bubble up when something horrible occurs. That way, we can heal and rebuild faster. We can’t let violence knock us off our feet every time we encounter it. We should see violence for what it is—natural.

When you see a lion run down a baby giraffe and bury its teeth into its throat, you don’t say, “Oh– that evil lion!”

No—you just say the lion has to eat. It may be unpleasant to watch, you may not like it, but that’s your problem.

Earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, the poles reversing, attacks from viruses, attacks from animals, attacks from other people…nature is a whirlwind of never-ending violence. You can’t sanitize it. You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. If you do, you’re the one being unnatural. And there are consequences for being unnatural—you create tension, stress, and discomfort in your body and soul.

It’s funny how attitudes about violence and killing have changed over time. I have a friend my age named Miguel who once told me a story which started like this: “So, we were getting ready for dinner and I was helping my dad bleed the pig, and my mom was in the kitchen with—”

“Wait. What did you just say? It sounded like you said ‘bleed the pig’.” And I heard right. As a boy, Miguel’s father would cut the neck of a pig, let the blood spill into a bucket, and then butcher the animal.

Gross! Or is it?

I dug a little deeper… it turned out my wife’s father used to do the same thing! It turned out my grandmother used to kill chickens in her basement.

Today, I’ve still got hunters in my family. They have no problem shooting and dressing a deer, or catching and gutting a fish. But I’ll bet you the number of people who have never killed and butchered an animal is higher today than at any time in human history… and growing.

Modern life is getting further and further removed from the blood and guts of the natural world, and many of us find ourselves looking back on it as if it’s behind glass, separate from the world we live in. But thinking we’re separate from the rest of nature is a dangerous illusion.

It reminds me of a glorious quote from Joyce Carol Oates–

 “When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.”

Too much reality in life! How great is that? Don’t be fooled, my friends—we’re part of nature. Like it or not.

So, where do you stand? Do you find it hard to watch nature shows where one animal eats another animal? Have you ever looked away when a doctor pulls out a needle or a scalpel?

How about this—can you imagine stabbing another human being with a knife? Most people recoil at the thought of stabbing someone. But what if you had to perform a tracheotomy? What if you had to cut into someone’s throat to keep them from suffocating? What if someone you loved was trapped and you had to cut off one of their limbs to free them? Yuck and yuck!

But why is that yucky? You have a body. You’re filled with blood. What happens in our lives to make us uncomfortable with the very stuff we’re made of?

Whatever the causes, we need to get over it. And here’s how—

Exposure.

In self-defense, some classes use yelling and swearing as part of the practice so students can be exposed to aggressive energy coming at them. The exposure can take away some of the bad guy’s power. You can practice the same skill by treating every angry customer, every child throwing a tantrum (or spouse!), or anyone acting badly, like a fire drill.

Practice breathing and keeping your cool in the face of aggression and you’re on your way to making peace with it.

I know, I know— enduring a tantrum is one thing, but putting your thumb into someone’s eye or picking up gun is something else. But remember—there is absolutely a time, whether you’re defending yourself, or someone you love, to strike back. Accept that.

Making peace with violence is really no different from learning to deal with someone you see regularly, but don’t like. You can’t deny they exist. You accept you’ll never get along, but find a way to not let them bug you. If you run into them, it’s no big deal. Your heart rate isn’t going to increase, you’re not going to get angry…you just live your life.

It’s also worth noting the word “violence” doesn’t only apply to self-defense. Anything swift and forceful is violent. Birth is violent. Making decisions can be violent. Turning your life around is violent. Starting a business, closing a business, moving across the country, getting married, getting divorced, quitting your job.

There are violent upheavals of character, goals, and dreams going on every day. And all of them can all be good.

But whether we’re talking about a violent crime, a violent act of nature, or a violent change in your life, you will experience similar feelings. You breathe faster, your heart quickens, your neck tightens, your adrenaline flows. You may find yourself freezing up or withdrawing, even when it’s to your advantage to step up and do something. All of that is working against you and has to stop.

Fact: How we deal with discomfort is a key marker for how likely we are to be happy and successful in our lives.

Challenge: Over the next couple of days, make a list of all the things that disgust you, annoy you, repulse you, and horrify you. Anything that makes you tense, nervous, or upset. Identify any and all causes of discomfort. Once you do that, get busy making peace with each and every one of them. Making peace with them means no longer ignoring them or denying they exist…it means confronting and spending time with them.

It’s tricky because when we make statements like, “I won’t go there,” “I won’t listen to that,” “I won’t watch that,” it feels powerful. Those are strong choices after all. But are they really choices? If you can’t bring yourself to even look at, or listen to, something, then really, you’re only reacting to it. You’re not choosing anything.

So, the next time you come across a station you find offensive, listen to it. Don’t judge it at all, just sit with it. Let it run its course until it doesn’t bug you anymore. See it for what it is. Don’t think you already know. Look deeper. If it still bothers you, you haven’t won yet.

When it finally bores you, now you can move on. You’ve made a choice. You’ve made peace with it.

The great thing about the modern age is access. You can seek out anything and everything on the internet and explore it in the safety and comfort of your own home. Challenge yourself— don’t just watch things that you enjoy. Seek out something that frightens you, disgusts you, angers you. Watch it. Study it. Get comfortable with it.

To me, that’s what self-defense is really all about…being comfortable. Even in bad situations—life and death situations—you find a way, on some level, to be comfortable. Comfortable enough to stay clear-headed, make good decisions, and take smart action.

When you operate from a place of comfort, you are at your most powerful.

You hear the cliché that love is stronger than hate, but it’s hard to love when you’re fearful and tense. Unless you work to be comfortable, hate will defeat you.

To utilize the power of love, you have to first accept the things you hate.

That’s how you rob them of their power. Stare into what you hate until you strip away its mystery, its surprise, and its ability to unnerve and overwhelm you. Make peace with the awful and your power will grow and your domain will widen.

Final thought. The world is a beautiful place. And violence is a part of that beautiful world. You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to welcome it, you don’t have to pursue it, but you would be wise to accept it.

Don’t waste time and energy condemning violence…condemn the people who use it unjustly.

Make peace with violence. And while you’re at it, make peace with the rain. Make peace with criticism. With growing older. With your body. With your enemies.

Make peace with anything and everything that causes you stress and robs you of happiness.

After all, you live here. Make yourself comfortable.

This article is a summary of the Fight for a Happy Life episode, “Make Peace with Violence.” Listen to the full podcast here.