Nearly everyone says they want world peace. The harder question is what we do when peace asks us to do something difficult.
Can we listen when we would rather argue? Stay curious when we feel misunderstood? Protect another person’s dignity when we are angry?
Those questions feel especially urgent on Sept. 21, the International Day of Peace.
Established by the United Nations in 1981, this day reminds us of a shared commitment to peace across differences. Yet in our increasingly fractured world – socially, politically and environmentally – peace often feels distant, aspirational, even naive.
How two New York teenagers became advocates for peace
This is especially the case for today’s youth. How do we help them believe they can contribute to repairing a world so marked by violence? A few years ago, two
New York City teenagers decided they wanted to try.
This summer we had several conversations with Sasan Korangy and Vail Brokaw, both high school seniors, and they told us about their journey to understanding peace, from rising 10th graders discovering the University for Peace in Costa Rica, a country that abolished its standing army in 1949, to cofounding a program that equips young leaders like themselves with practical skills for building peace.
The organization was established by the U.N. General Assembly in 1980 as an international institution devoted to peace, tolerance and cooperation.
At the start, Korangy and Brokaw said their questions were big: Why do conflicts emerge and escalate? What does good leadership require? How do people communicate across differences without dehumanizing the other side?
The “big” work kept leading them back to “small” moments: Listening when you have the urge to interrupt. Remaining curious when you feel judged. Noticing when anger is becoming contempt.
They began with the idea of ”world peace” and discovered how difficult it can be to build peace even between two people.
Their work eventually became Young Leaders for Peace, a summer program they co-developed with faculty and staff at the university's New York office. The program brings high school students together to study conflict, leadership, emotional intelligence, sustainability and peacebuilding – and, importantly, to practice what they are learning.
What does working on peace in our everyday lives look like?
The university exists to grapple with a reality that Korangy, Brokaw and their aspiring young leaders also came to understand: Peace is hard. It can be scary and uncomfortable. Conflict does not disappear because we value peace. Neither do anger, hurt, prejudice, power differences or the human desire to be right.
We asked Korangy: What does “practicing peace” actually look like in your everyday life?
“Peace can sound like a leader’s long vision or big idea, something countries aspire to do,” he told us. “But it can start with how you listen to somebody you disagree with. I work hard to do that when we are discussing something challenging in our groups. Can I stay interested, ask good questions and be open? I asked myself, ‘Will I notice when my anger might be turning into contempt?’ ‘What do I do when I witness that in someone else’s dialogue?’ ”
Of course, two teenagers navigating a disagreement is not the same as diplomats negotiating between nations at war. The stakes, histories and consequences are vastly different. And yet many of these conversations start the same way:
- I disagree. I want to learn more. Can we keep talking?
- I’m willing to listen and to do my best not to judge.
- Help me understand why you see it differently.
Young Leaders for Peace creates the conditions for exactly these kinds of conversations. Participants study conflict and policy, but they also spend long stretches of time together without their phones. That gives conversations time to become uncomfortable without ending: time to misunderstand, repair and try again. That is where emotional intelligence becomes part of the work of peace.
We can teach each other how to navigate conflict
Before responding in a charged moment, we can ask: What am I feeling? What might the other person be feeling? What story am I telling myself about this person? What am I assuming about their motives? What response would reflect the person I want to be?
That pause creates a chance to choose our response rather than simply react.
We asked Brokaw: Why peace?
“Because if the lesson is only that something terrible happened, then we haven’t learned enough,” he said. “We have to ask what keeps violence from becoming the next mass destruction. We need to practice de-escalating conflicts before rage sets in, not after. We see it every day in heated conversations, many of which are inevitable.”
That is where emotional intelligence and peacebuilding meet. Emotional intelligence gives us the skills to recognize and regulate what is happening within and between us; peacebuilding puts those skills to work in conflict. One helps us navigate the emotional forces that can divide us. The other helps us turn those moments toward understanding, repair and, ultimately, peace.
So what does honoring a day of peace ask of a generation exposed to so much violence?
Young people have inherited wars they did not begin, suspicions they did not create and hatreds far older than they are. They also carry technologies that can deliver outrage and humiliation directly before breakfast.
So what should we teach them? Not to avoid conflict. Conflict is inevitable.
Teach them to name what they feel with precision. Pause before reacting. Stay curious about what they do not understand. Respond with dignity.
And then give them opportunities to practice. At dinner, ask everyone to discuss something they see differently without interrupting. In classrooms, teach students how to disagree without attacking character. When conflict erupts, do not rush only to punishment or avoidance; help young people examine what they felt, assumed and did – and what they might try next time.
We cannot give this generation a world without conflict. But we can teach them what to do when conflict activates them.
Those skills will not end wars by themselves. But without them, peace at the dinner table, in the classroom or at the negotiating table becomes much harder to build.
Peace begins with courage, curiosity and dignity. And it takes shape in what we practice every day.
Robin Stern, PhD, is the cofounder and senior adviser to the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and a psychoanalyst in private practice. She is the author of "The Gaslight Effect" and "The Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide," and host of "The Gaslight Effect Podcast."
Marc Brackett, PhD, is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at Yale’s Child Study Center. He is the author of "Permission to Feel” and "Dealing with Feeling,” which is also the name of his podcast. Opinions are those of the authors and do not reflect those of Yale School of Medicine.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What these two teenagers can teach us about finding peace | Opinion
