Department of Peace?

Time alarm clock went off: 5:58. Time got out of bed: 6:12 (stupendous). Time hopped in car to drive self to school: 6:36 (very excited about this fact)
It seems that with Spring, violence has cropped up like daffodils, like poppies at the high school. It’s sad, and a little embarrassing to know that my peers like to resolve their conflicts through punches and slaps and pinches. It’s embarrassing to know that my fellow human beings resort to guns and knives and war to solve their problems. Fortunately, while news of fights blares and shoves at us, a quiet movement has crept its way into the crinkles of our subconscious: the Peace Movement. This is not an anti-war movement; it’s not a movement against anything. It is simply pro-peace, and that’s that.
Groups of students and adults throughout the nation have been meshing and mingling together, sharing ideas, stories, praise, building the dream of a United States Department of Peace: a hypothetical section of our U.S. government, dedicated to creating a Peace Academy, integrating non-violent communication education into the school system, and teaching Peace to the American people. On high school and college campuses across the country, youths yearning for peace have set up clubs and groups and called themselves the Student Peace Alliance.
It gives me chills — the good kind that run down your spine and out your toes and make you feel alive — to think that so many people have taken the initiative to do something, to organize, to present an idea that could make history. I have a feeling I’m not the only one whose breath catches and heart races at the thought of peace. The styles in the student body have evolved to include all things peace on backpacks, binders, sunglasses, shirts, shoes, sweaters, jackets, rings, earrings. Perhaps it’s simply a fad, the peace sign. But perhaps not, and its meaning and philosophy are becoming ever-present in society and the human conscious.
Yes, I believe infinitely in peace, as do the people of the Student Peace Alliance, and the people for a United States Department of Peace, and my neighbors and your neighbors and perhaps even you. I believe in the ability to feel safe in one’s house or neighborhood, to feel secure enough to step outside at night, take a walk, chat with the moon and stars. As a school, as a town, as a country, as a world, we have not yet achieved this ability but I believe that with time, with patience and trust, Peace will blanket itself around humanity so that we can snuggle deep inside, root ourselves into its nooks and grooves and crannies, settle, to stay.