PEACE OF MIND

A human being sets down his inventory of earthly desirables: Health, Love, Beauty, Talent, Power, Riches and Fame together with several minor ingredients of what he considers man's perfect portion. Could a man possess them all he would be as "GOD". And yet in this excellent list has been omitted the most important element of all, with whose lacking each possession becomes a hideous torment and such lists an intolerable burden - "PEACE OF MIND".
This is the gift that God reserves for his special proteges. Talent and Beauty, He gives to many. Wealth is common place, Fame not rare either. But " Peace Of Mind" - that is His final reward of approval, the fondest sign of His love. He bestows it charily. Most men are never blessed with it; others wait all their lives - yes, far into advanced age - for this gift to descend upon them.
I know that sum of all other possessions does not necessarily add upto " Peace Of Mind", yet on the other hand I have seen this inner tranquility flourish without the material support of Property or the buttress of Physical Health. Slowly I have learned that "Peace Of Mind" may transform a cottage into a spacious palace, the want of it can make a regal park into a imprisoning nutshell.
The quest for this unwearied inner peace is costant and universal. Analyze the prayers of troubled, overborne mankind of all creeds, in every age - and their petitions come down to the irreducible common denominators of daily bread and inward peace. When grown men lift up their hearts and voices in this valley of tears they ask for strength and courage and understanding!
Especially today, when the prayers of men ascend, mourning and wailing to the Bestower of gifts, they plead for an inward tranquility that is both a fortress and a sanctuary and with reason. Modern man is treadfing a narrow defile that skirts an inferno of such destruction as Dante could not envision. Striken by psychic anxieties, cloven by emotional conflicts, beset by economic insecurities, assailed by political doubts and cynicisms, the plucked rooster, man,l is a peculiarly vulnearable fowl as he struts along the path of civilisation. He has crowed a good deal in his time, rather bravely at spots. But now he begins to suspect that the axe of destiny is being sharpened for his neck. He trembles, pales, calls for modern music, stronger wine to drown the approaching spectre of his fate. For the fact emerges that the contemporary man is afraid!!!!
In his fears he casts around for devices and techniques of salvation. What he needs is not a set of reassuring answers but an inner equilibrium, a spiritual stability that is proof against confusion and disaster. "Peace Of Mind" must not be identified with ivory-tower escapism from the hurly-burly of life, nor is it "a negative conception of anasthesia". Rather it enables us to accept the pummelings of fate with equanimity - even with a kind of eagerness sprung out of the sure knowledge that such buffeting cannot divert us from our creative life course.