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Humanity, more than any other species on the planet, has a strange relationship with time. In fact, humanity’s relationship with time often seems dysfunctional. By exploring this relationship, we can unlock solutions to our human problems and gain essential insights about what it means to be human. To be effective soldiers of peace and to become peace literate, we must have a realistic understanding of time.

My journey to understand time began when I was a child living in a violent household. In The Cosmic Ocean I describe my childhood trauma in detail, discussing how a violent upbringing gave me an immense capacity for rage, and how I transformed my rage into radical empathy.

Because of the trauma I experienced during my childhood, I began to feel that time was my enemy. When I made small mistakes, my father could become so enraged that he would beat me to the point where I feared for my life. Sometimes these vicious attacks occurred for no apparent reason at all. Time felt like my enemy because when I made a small mistake that triggered my father’s rage, time never allowed me to take back the mistake. Time refused to go backward, to give me a second chance, even if I felt my life was at risk. Time simply did not care whether I lived or died.

But as a small boy I gained new insights about time from an unlikely source of wisdom: video games. When I played video games as a child, time was my friend. Time was kind. Compared to the way time functioned in the violent and terrifying reality I lived in, time in video games was forgiving and merciful. In video games I had the ability to pause time. Video games also allowed me to replay moments in time, over and over again, as often as I wanted. If I made a mistake in a video game, I could start over, get back to where I was, replay the moment, and avoid the mistake. In real life, time did not give me second chances, no matter how much agony I was experiencing. In video games, time gave me as many chances as I wanted.

To gain literacy in our shared humanity, we must understand how time affects the human condition. Time, more than any other force of nature, shapes and torments us as human beings. Time does not torment us because it exists, but because it flows in only one direction. If we make a mistake and desperately beg time to turn backward so that we can change the past, time cannot feel compassion for us, no matter how much we beg. If we pray for time to bring back our loved ones or let us relive earlier years of our life, time cannot hear our prayers. Time does not listen to the cries of humanity. Time feels no remorse. Time never relents, always flowing forward, not caring about those it tramples along the way. These characteristics resemble the very definition of ruthlessness.

Time is a thief that steals everything it touches, keeps everything it steals, and destroys everything it keeps. Because of our large brains, human beings have a heightened awareness that allows us to perceive time in this way, which no other species on the planet seems to have. Our heightened awareness of time is part of our shared humanity. As far as we know, no other species on the planet fears growing old as much as we can, desires plastic surgery or dyes its hair to look younger, searches for the fountain of youth and scientific breakthroughs that some say will make us immortal, debates whether there is life after death, fantasizes about time travel, and has an obsession with prophecy.^*

Earlier in this book I mentioned that every culture in history has been fascinated with the stars and created stories about the night sky. In a similar way, every culture in history has also been fascinated with prophecy and created predictions about the future. Prophecy has played a central role in every culture we know of, as people look for good and bad omens, hoping these omens will reveal how the future will unfold. To mention a few of the countless examples of humanity’s fascination with prophecy, the ancient Greeks sacrificed animals to Apollo the god of prophecy, numerous indigenous cultures have looked for good and bad omens in nature, and many Christians have been interested in the prophecies from the book of Revelation.

Today prophecy can take the form of palm readers, tarot cards, and even science. Science serves many of the same psychological needs that prophecy did thousands of years ago, by helping us predict the weather, natural disasters, and various crises before they happen. Furthermore, modern medical tests that predict illnesses early are a form of prophecy that allow us to take proactive steps to treat those illnesses before it is too late. Economic forecasts that try to predict changes in markets, along with polls that try to predict how people will vote on an issue or political candidate, also feed people’s fascination with prophecy. Although these diverse methods of prophecy are not equal in reliability (science has proven to be a far more accurate way than animal sacrifice to predict future events), they all serve our shared human urge to predict the future, which emerges from our shared human awareness that time is ruthless.

When I deployed to Iraq in 2006, I worked with a system called CRAM (counter rocket, artillery, and mortar). C-RAM included a network of radars that could detect incoming mortars and rockets, then sound an alarm that would warn the people on the base when a deadly impact was imminent, allowing them to take cover. These radars could also be linked with an automatic machine gun capable of intercepting mortars and rockets. C-RAM offered modern scientific prophecy, rather than ancient supernatural prophecy such as animal sacrifice, to combat time’s ruthlessness. In war, being warned just a few seconds before an explosion occurs can allow people to better protect themselves, meaning the difference between life and death.

In addition to our inability to control natural disasters and other forces of nature, two aspects of reality make prophecy appealing to all cultures. The first is that human beings are not perfect, but prone to making all kinds of mistakes. The second is that time cannot flow backward. This is a painful combination for humanity. All cultures have a fascination with predicting future events because we all recognize, either consciously or unconsciously, that time is ruthless and does not travel in reverse, no matter how much we beg or pray.^* Imagine how much suffering we could avoid if we had the ability to rewind time just thirty seconds. Time’s ruthlessness is especially apparent in war, where people are often maimed and killed for making the smallest mistakes.

How do I respond to time’s ruthlessness? By being fully aware of time’s ruthlessness and not repressing this reality, I am able to recognize and feel deeply connected to the vulnerability and fragility of life. This motivates me to be kind and gentle in all the ways time cannot. As human beings, our survival depends on our ability to give each other the kindness, gentleness, empathy, and mercy that time cannot give us. This is one of our greatest powers as human beings. Because time is so ruthless, the last thing our world needs is ruthless human beings. Every human community, including our global community, benefits from people who are kind, gentle, empathetic, and merciful.^** In The Art of Waging Peace I discuss how martial arts philosophy teaches us to have a respectful and gentle attitude toward life, and I also share some truths and myths about using violence to protect life as a last resort.

I have heard people say that time is not ruthless, but is in fact kind and merciful because “time heals all wounds.” But our wounds, whether physical or psychological, do not heal unless we create the conditions for healing. Time by itself does not heal, because time can further recovery or infection. What we do with time allows us to heal.

I have also heard people say that time is kind and merciful because it gives us wisdom. But again, the growth of wisdom depends on what we do with time. The aging process gives us life experiences, but not necessarily wisdom. What we learn from those life experiences gives us wisdom. Time can make us wise or bitter, because people can become more loving or more hateful as they age. Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, Buddha said, “Gray hairs do not make a master. A man may grow old in vain.”¹

This book discusses how to make the best use of time by waging peace in our personal lives, communities, and throughout the world. By using time to wage peace, we can heal the root causes of violence, trauma, and injustice on a personal, national, and global level. We should never apathetically leave our problems in the hands of time, trusting that time alone will heal wounds and provide wisdom. This form of apathy is dangerous to our personal well-being and the health of our planet. Time is not a trustworthy custodian of human problems. We must make good use of time by waging peace to proactively solve these problems.

During my four years at West Point and seven years in the army, I gradually realized that despite time’s ruthlessness, it is a mistake to perceive time as an enemy. Time may seem ruthless, but it enables everything we admire about human beings. Time allows us to be courageous, selfless, and heroic. Time allows human greatness to unfold, because time is the blank canvas where the masterpieces of human existence can be painted.

These masterpieces are possible because time makes us mortal, and mortality gives us the potential for greatness. So many people around the world despise being mortal, wishing they were immortal instead. But classics professor Elizabeth Vandiver explains how the Iliad, written nearly three thousand years ago by the Greek poet Homer, reveals that human mortality is the source of our human greatness. Ironically, the mortality we so often despise is the very thing that makes us capable of what we admire most in human beings: courage, self-sacrifice, and heroism. Vandiver explains how in the Iliad, the portrayal of immortal Greek gods such as Zeus reveals truths about the human condition:

Humans, by definition in the Iliad, are the ones who die … One aspect of the importance of the gods [in the Iliad] is that they are there to provide a contrast [with] human beings, precisely in this question of mortality and immortality. The gods in the Iliad are defined as, are often referred to by the term the athanatoi—the deathless ones, the undying ones, the ones who cannot die … Mortals, humans, in contrast, are called the thnêtoi—the dying ones, but really it almost means the dead ones, as though our lives are so short and so unimportant against the backdrop of eternity that we’re dead as soon as we come into existence. The gods are the deathless ones, the humans are almost the already dead ones … This contrast between the athanatoi gods and the thnêtoi humans makes for the crucial, defining distinction between gods and humans, the crucial, defining aspect of what it means to be human in the Iliad.

The gods of Homer, the gods in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, are extremely anthropomorphic in many ways. They are conceived of as being humanlike in shape, in appearance, in emotions, in activities, in just about every imaginable way. This is not the only way to conceive of gods. There have been cultures whose gods have not been anthropomorphic, have not been human-form, human-like in character, in appearance, in any other way. But the gods of Homer are extraordinarily anthropomorphic … They sleep. They fight. They have sex. They grow angry. They feel love. They feel hatred. They are in many ways very much like human beings projected on a larger scale, and yet they are humanlike creatures who cannot grow old and cannot die, whereas humans by definition must grow old and must die. And this distinction is harped on over and over and over again in the Iliad, far more than it is for instance in the Odyssey [the other epic attributed to Homer] … the Iliad has been called a poem of death and this is part of why …

So this focus on death as the defining characteristic of human existence, and this distinction between mortals and immortals, between humans and gods, between the deathless ones and the dying ones … highlights the human condition constantly throughout the Iliad by contrasting human existence with the gods’ state of easy living. The gods are often referred to as the rheia zoontes, the ones who live easily, the ones who have no cares, no troubles, no problems, no difficulties, as compared to us humans, who have all the problems, difficulties, troubles in the world, and have to die on top of it …

The role of the gods in the Iliad varies between grandeur and pettiness. There are times when these gods seem awe-inspiring, magnificent, numinous, grand … There are other times, however, when they seem remarkably shallow and petty. And this double nature of the gods, this tension between grandeur and pettiness, has seemed odd to a great many readers of the Iliad. There’s no question as to why the gods are shown as awe-inspiring and grand, but why are they sometimes shown as petty and trivial? To understand what’s going on there, why Homer treats the gods this way in the Iliad, I think we need to realize that there are two distinct viewpoints at play here.

When we the audience in effect step into the Iliad and look at the gods from the point of view of the human characters, when we stand shoulder to shoulder with Agamemnon or Hector or Paris or Achilles, and look at the gods from that point of view, [the gods] are without question awe-inspiring, magnificent, numinous, glorious, dangerous beings whom it is very wise not to offend. But when we stand side-by-side with Homer the narrator and look at the gods from the point of view of the narrator of the epic, or putting it another way look at the gods on their own terms in the Iliad, they sometimes seem shallow, petty, trivial, almost as though they are comic relief. This is to some extent shocking and surprising, the idea of the gods as shallow, petty, and trivial, and yet it is undeniably there in the Iliad.

These gods complain loudly about minor injuries … When Aphrodite is wounded by [the Greek soldier] Diomedes, he scratches her hand when she is trying to carry her son Aeneas off the battlefield, she drops Aeneas, flies up to Mount Olympus and cries in her mother’s lap because her hand hurts. The gods are easily distracted from the troubles even of their human favorites. They brawl with one other. They call each other names. They box each other’s ears. They behave in many very undignified ways …

So the obvious question is why does the Iliad present this double-view of the gods. What does the epic gain from this apparent pettiness of its divinities? It wasn’t by any means necessary for [the] epic to portray the gods this way. The gods in the Odyssey are much less shallow, much less petty, much less trivial than the gods in the Iliad. I think the key point for understanding what’s going on here with these gods in the Iliad is once again to look at them as a means of comparison for humans. The gods lack human vulnerability. They cannot be seriously wounded. They cannot be killed. And along with lacking human vulnerability, or the possibility of death, they lack human seriousness and any capacity for nobility … A being that cannot risk anything serious, an entity that cannot be seriously harmed, let alone killed, is incapable, is almost by definition incapable, of showing courage, altruism, nobility, self-sacrifice, any of those virtues that we admire most in humans, any of those virtues that perhaps come into fullest detail in a war: courage, self-sacrifice, and so forth. An immortal being that cannot even be seriously wounded cannot exhibit any of those traits.

And so in a very real sense, Homer’s gods are more trivial than Homer’s humans. Homer’s humans can display courage, nobility, and self-sacrifice. His gods can’t. And I think the treatment of the gods as trivial highlights that difference [between godlike immortality and human mortality]. This contrast between the humans in the Iliad, who are faced with the absolutely serious issues of life and death, and gods who can risk nothing, once again underlines what it means to be human and how serious a matter that is.²

The Iliad reveals a hidden truth that many people today do not recognize. Understanding this hidden truth is necessary to know what it means to be human and fully walk the road to peace. This truth is that the only reason human beings are capable of being courageous, self-sacrificing, and heroic—the qualities we admire most about human beings—is that we are mortal. The Greek gods are like us in so many other ways, but because they cannot be killed or seriously injured, they cannot be courageous. As Elizabeth Vandiver mentioned, an immortal being that risks nothing^* and cannot be killed or seriously injured is incapable of being courageous.

Many adjectives are used to describe God in the Bible, but because he is immortal and invulnerable, he is never described as being courageous. Never does he display courage, the most widely admired human virtue. In fact, it is absurd to think of the biblical God as being courageous, because according to Christian theology, why would an immortal and all-powerful being that cannot be hurt need courage?

In the Bible, the Jewish prophets can be courageous (by putting themselves at risk when they oppose injustice), but God cannot. Because of God’s immortality and invulnerability, he can only display courage in the Bible by taking human form, when he becomes Jesus. Like human beings, Jesus can be courageous and self-sacrificing. Because he has a mortal body, Jesus can be tortured, seriously injured, and killed. As a result, Jesus possesses qualities such as heroism that the gods in the Iliad cannot achieve. Jesus has far more in common with Homer’s human characters in the Iliad, who are striving heroically to navigate the painful struggle of life and death, than with any of Homer’s immortal gods.

When people admire soldiers, firefighters, and nonviolent activists, they often admire the courage it takes to risk one’s life for others. Sergeant First Class Alwyn Cashe, an American soldier mortally wounded in Iraq while risking his life to save his comrades, demonstrated how courage, self-sacrifice, and heroism are only possible because we are vulnerable to serious injury and death. Journalist David Zucchino explains how Cashe was mortally wounded while risking his life for others:

[Sergeant First Class Alwyn] Cashe, his uniform soaked with fuel, had plunged into a burning vehicle in Iraq on Oct. 17, 2005, to rescue soldiers who were on fire … Cashe rescued six badly burned soldiers while under enemy small-arms fire. His own uniform caught fire, engulfing him in flames. Even with second- and third-degree burns over three-fourths of his body, Cashe continued to pull soldiers out of a vehicle set ablaze when a roadside bomb ruptured a fuel tank …

Nine years after the Iraq bomb attack, retired Sgt. Gary Mills [recalls what happened] … Mills was inside the stricken Bradley fighting vehicle that day. He was on fire, his hands so badly burned that he couldn’t open the rear troop door to free himself and other soldiers trapped inside the flaming vehicle.

Someone opened the door from outside, Mills recalls. A powerful hand grabbed him and yanked him to safety. He later learned that the man who had rescued him was Cashe, who seconds later crawled into the vehicle to haul out the platoon’s critically burned medic while on fire himself.

“Sgt. Cashe saved my life,” Mills said. “With all the ammo inside that vehicle, and all those flames, we’d have all been dead in another minute or two.”

Four of the six soldiers rescued later died of their wounds at a hospital. An Afghan interpreter riding in the Bradley died during the bomb attack. Cashe refused to be loaded onto a medical evacuation helicopter until all the other wounded men had been flown.

A citation proposing the Medal of Honor for Cashe reads: “SFC Cashe’s selfless and gallant actions allowed the loved ones of these brave soldiers to spend precious time by their sides before they succumbed.”

Cashe’s sister, Kasinal Cashe White, spent three weeks at her brother’s bedside at a military hospital in Texas as doctors treated his extensive burns. She knew nothing of his actions during the bomb attack until a nurse asked her, “You know your brother’s a hero, don’t you?”

When Cashe was able to speak, White said, his first words were: “How are my boys?”—his soldiers, she said.

Then he began weeping, she said. He told her: “I couldn’t get to them fast enough.”

Cashe died Nov. 8, 2005.

“My little brother lived by the code that you never leave your soldiers behind,” White said. “That wasn’t just something from a movie. He lived it.”³

Stories like this have enormous inspirational power, yet a person does not have to die a painful death while saving others to display self-sacrifice. Because human beings have a limited lifespan, dedicating most of your life, or even a much smaller amount of your time to serving others, can be an act of self-sacrifice. Because the gods in the Iliad are immortal, dedicating even a thousand years to something is not an act of self-sacrifice for them, since they have an infinite amount of time to spare. When a divine being is immortal, time becomes a meaningless feature within the endless landscape of eternity. But because human beings are mortal, every moment is precious and something we can never get back. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman reminds us, “Sometimes the ultimate love is not to sacrifice your life, but to live a life of sacrifice.”⁴

Furthermore, a person does not have to risk dying a painful death to be courageous. In Peaceful Revolution I define bravery as overcoming the feeling of fear. Courage, however, has a broader meaning because it can be moral as well as physical. As I will discuss later in this book, living courageously is a way of life that allows us to achieve our highest human potential and improve the well-being of any community we interact with. When a person lives courageously, bravery can come more naturally.

Many of us assume that people who possess immense material wealth and luxury have lives similar to those of immortal gods, because luxury offers so much physical comfort that people can live under the illusion that they are immune to pain and death. But we are different from the Greek gods not only because we are mortal, but also in another significant way. As I explain in The Cosmic Ocean, human beings have cravings that are not physical. These cravings include our hunger for purpose, meaning, belonging, self-worth, and transcendence.^* We must find ways to fulfill these cravings just as other animals must find food and water.

Human beings are the only species on the planet that can become depressed, addicted to drugs, and suicidal, even when we have freedom, a belly full of food, good health, family, and the physical comfort of luxury. Because we can be so greatly tormented by our very existence, there is a part in the Iliad where Zeus, the king of the gods, looks upon human beings and says, “There is nothing alive more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.”⁵

Unlike humans, the immortal gods in the Iliad do not struggle with a need to find purpose and meaning in their lives, the desire to belong, low self-worth, or the yearning to transcend time. Humans crave purpose and meaning so desperately that we can be drawn to many forms of fanaticism, but the Greek gods know that their purpose is to rule the world as divine beings. Humans will die without access to a human community,^* which is why we crave belonging, but the Greek gods cannot die. Humans can feel low self-worth because of the way we look, how much money we make, and having characteristics that our society deems imperfect. But the Greek gods do not age, they need no money, and they are perfect in ways that humans can never be. Humans have a craving to transcend the limitations of time, but the Greek gods effortlessly exist beyond these limitations.

The immortal Greek gods also seem immune to the kinds of trauma that so often devastate the human mind. Therefore, the Greek gods in the Iliad do not suffer from problems that can result from childhood trauma and our unfulfilled human cravings, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders, a desire to numb the mind, a midlife crisis, or suicidal thoughts. If luxury solved all of our human problems, then every successful Hollywood celebrity would never suffer from psychological problems and would instead be completely happy every moment of every day.

In addition to our cravings for purpose, meaning, belonging, self-worth, and transcendence, human beings also crave explanations. As far as we know, when lightning strikes the ground we are the only species that asks why, and we are the only species that tries to answer this question with religious and scientific explanations. Only human beings, not Greek gods or wild animals, create religions and science to explain the mysteries of our universe.

Time is a great mystery that all cultures have tried to understand. An allegory about Zeus’s father, Cronos, the god of time, can help us better understand the mystery of time. In the Iliad the Olympians, a race of Greek gods that includes Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Ares, and many others, cannot be seriously injured. If they are physically wounded, their wounds are easily and quickly healed.^*

According to Greek mythology, the Titans are an earlier race of Greek gods who rule the world before the events in the Iliad take place. The Titans include Cronos (the father of the first Olympians), Prometheus (who steals fire from the gods and gives it to humanity), Atlas (who holds the sky on his shoulders), Gaia (a goddess who personifies the earth), and Ouranos (a god who personifies the sky, better known by his Latin name Uranus).

Unlike the Olympians, the Titans can be seriously injured, although they, like the Olympians, cannot be killed. The following allegorical story about the birth of time shows how people in ancient Greece tried to explain the mystery of time. Surprisingly, this ancient story agrees in some ways with modern science. Elizabeth Vandiver recounts how the ancient Greek poet Hesiod described Gaia and Ouranos giving birth to time:

Gaia and Ouranos mate and produce these twelve children [Titans], but all is not well, because Ouranos does not allow the children to be born. He pushes each one back into Gaia’s womb as each child is born … This causes Gaia great pain as well as causing her great anger, and therefore she conspires with her youngest son, a Titan named Cronos, to overthrow Cronos’s father Ouranos. Gaia produces a sickle [that she gives to Cronos] … Cronos hides inside Gaia’s body, and the next time Ouranos comes to have sex with Gaia, Cronos from inside Gaia’s womb grasps hold of Ouranos’s genitals and cuts them off …

At this point Ouranos retreats from Gaia and becomes the dome of the sky. He never again takes any very active part in anything that happens … He cannot be killed … A god by definition cannot be killed. What Cronos has done is the next best thing, has disempowered, disabled his father, by castrating him. Obviously, if you can’t kill a god, what you are going to do is deprive him of his power to the greatest extent possible, and depriving him of his masculinity is a very clear symbolic way of depriving him of his power.

So Ouranos becomes the dome of the sky that touches Gaia on all sides … This also leaves room, physical room, for the children to be born. The picture that Hesiod seems to be presenting here is before the castration of Ouranos [he] was not yet the dome of the sky with which we are all familiar. He was pressing down on Gaia. He was flat on Gaia. There was no separation in-between them, quite literally no room for those children to develop. It’s only when Ouranos retreats and becomes the sky as we know it that the Titans, the children, can spring forth from Gaia and become powerful entities in their own rights …

This story of Cronos castrating his father also lends itself remarkably well to allegorical interpretation due to the resemblance of Cronos’s name to the Greek word for time [chronos] … Now if we go with the allegorical interpretation that this similarity of the name Cronos and the word for time seems to imply, we can say that when Cronos was freed from Gaia’s womb after he castrated his father Ouranos, time itself came into being. On this interpretation, we’re really dealing with a fairly sophisticated concept here. Not only is it necessary for there to be space for Gaia’s children to develop in, not only must Ouranos back away and leave room for the children to develop, time is also necessary. You’ve got to have space, you’ve also got to have time, for development to take place.

And so only when Cronos, only when time, has come into true being, according to this allegorical interpretation … can the world come into full functioning order [and create the conditions for plants, animals, and humans to exist] … I like to point [this allegory] out because again it does show the level of sophistication that can be working under the surface of what at first sight is a rather horrifically gory and outré story, the castration of Ouranos by Cronos.⁶

Time is a great mystery that scientists may never fully comprehend. Metaphors and allegories are useful because they help us understand how the human condition is shaped by this mysterious force we call time, which makes existence possible while transcending human comprehension. Similar to the allegorical interpretation of Cronos’s birth, modern science also acknowledges that space and time are necessary for existence to unfold. Many physicists call this space-time. The allegory of Cronos’s birth^* goes a step further by depicting time as a ruthless being that cuts off his father’s genitals.

Perhaps the most ruthless depiction of time is found in Hinduism. Kali is a Hindu goddess who symbolizes time. She is also a metaphor for time’s ruthlessness, because if we are lucky enough to live a long and fulfilling life, time will take away our loved ones, wrinkle our skin, turn our hair gray, cause our flesh to sag, make us ill, and then after all that, time will kill us. That is, if we are lucky enough to live a long and fulfilling life. To symbolize how time kills children and adults with diseases, accidents, and violence before they can experience old age, Kali wears a necklace of decapitated heads, a girdle of hacked-off arms, and earrings made from children’s corpses. Hinduism does not sugarcoat its depiction of time.

Although the struggles caused by Kali (time) affect people in different amounts, no person is completely immune to time. How does recognizing the full extent of time’s ruthlessness help us wield the weapon of nonviolence with maximum force? As I mentioned earlier, by being fully aware of time’s ruthlessness and not repressing this reality, I am able to recognize and feel deeply connected to the vulnerability and fragility of life. This motivates me to be kind and gentle in all the ways time cannot. Because time is so ruthless to all forms of life, we all have an incentive to become kinder, more compassionate, and gentler in our interactions with others.

To show how practical this attitude really is, ask yourself this: do you want to be around people who behave ruthlessly like time, having absolutely no compassion for you, or do you want to be around people who treat you kindly, mercifully, and with a type of gentleness built on the force of respect?

What is gentleness built on the force of respect? West Point graduate General Douglas MacArthur discussed gentleness in leadership and the importance of not running away from struggle in a speech he gave at West Point in 1962. West Point’s ideals helped me understand the meaning of gentleness, and in General MacArthur’s speech he said that the ideals of West Point “teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.”⁷

Peter Cullen was the voice actor for Optimus Prime in the 1980s cartoon Transformers, a cartoon I watched often as a child. Optimus Prime, the leader of the heroes in the cartoon, was a robot who could transform into a truck. Cullen describes how his brother (a marine and Vietnam veteran) told him about the importance of gentleness:

My brother Larry was a marine who fought in Vietnam, and he was an officer and he was given the Bronze Star for valor [and] a couple of purple hearts. Larry was thirteen months older than me, and he was my hero since we were growing up as kids … He did everything, played professional football as well before being in the Marine Corps …

And when we were living together in Hollywood, I was going through a little change in my life, and he asked me, “Peter, where are you going?”

I said, “I’m going to an audition.”

He said, “Yeah? What are you auditioning for, Pete?”

I said, “I’m auditioning for a truck.”

[Larry laughed,] “A truck?”

“But he’s a hero truck, Larry … What I mean is, I don’t know much about it, Larry. I just know he’s a truck and he’s a leader, he’s a hero.” And I was getting a little nervous and wanting to get in the car and get out.

And he said, “Peter, if you’re going to be a hero, be a real hero.” And he got very very calm, and he said, “Don’t be shouting and posing and pretending and yelling and acting tough. Heroes don’t do that. If you’re going to be a hero, be a real hero. Be strong enough to be gentle, and be humble, be courageous, be proud.”

And those words hung on me … It was so important to me and I thought about those words when I went to the audition. And when I got into the little cubicle, I had the pages in front of me and I had gone over them, but I hadn’t done my voice for them yet, but I just remember Larry saying, “Peter, if you’re going to be a hero, be a real hero, be strong enough to be gentle.” And I just took that softness into the microphone [and said,] “My name is Optimus Prime.” And then I read.⁸

We must “be strong enough to be gentle.” True gentleness requires the strength of courage, respect, and compassion. In all of human history I don’t think anyone has ever seriously said, “I want to be around people who treat me without respect and compassion.” If we were supposed to behave ruthlessly, why would people respond so well to being treated with respect and compassion, and why would we respond so badly when our fellow human beings treat us ruthlessly with absolutely no regard for our thoughts, emotions, or well-being?

Recognizing the full extent of time’s ruthlessness also helps us dispel the popular myth that peace is the absence of struggle. When we gain literacy in the nature of reality, we understand that this myth of peace is not possible, because as long as time exists, struggle will also exist. Today many people see peace as merely the absence of struggle, which is the most common depiction of peace in the world today. However, the unrealistic depiction of peace as the absence of struggle prevents us from achieving a realistic form of peace based on empathy, understanding, justice, and so much more.

Realistic peace is not the absence of struggle, but the process of transforming struggle into purpose, meaning, empathy, understanding, justice, gentleness built on the force of respect, and the many conditions needed for survival and prosperity. The art of waging peace is a strategic method for activating this peace process in our personal lives, among our local communities, throughout our nations, and around the world. The popular notion that peace is the absence of struggle turns people away from the idea of peace by making it sound naive and unrealistic. The popular notion that peace is the absence of struggle also defies the laws of nature.

Predating humanity, struggle is a part of nature that every creature contends with. Struggle and adversity are laws of life. Even if humanity abolishes war between countries, people will still have to overcome many challenges during our fragile future, and every future generation will also have to struggle to achieve purpose, meaning, belonging, self-worth, transcendence, and the other “spiritual cravings” I describe in The Cosmic Ocean.

The star of struggle is a necessary light in the constellation of peace, because creating peace requires us to willingly confront and move toward struggle, rather than run away from struggle. One reason realistic peace has so much difficulty flourishing in our world is that countless people run away from struggle and avoid conflict, which allows apathy and injustice to flourish. A quote attributed to Edmund Burke reminds us, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”⁹

People often ask me how I gained an understanding of peace and transformed from a soldier in war to a soldier of peace. People also ask me how I transformed my rage into radical empathy. Although all of my books contain stories that illustrate my lifelong journey to find and walk the road to peace, the simplest answer I can provide is that I learned to embrace peace as a process, lifestyle, and way of being.

Because I have embraced peace as a process, I strive every day to transform the struggles I experience into purpose, meaning, empathy, and understanding. In every conflict I experience, I strive to increase justice for everyone involved and become gentler along the way. I also study the art of waging peace so that I can help people come together and apply the peace process on a local and global level.

The global peace process is symbolized by our journey to sail the sea of time on a course toward survival, prosperity, and a sustainable biosphere. As I mentioned earlier, time is a ruthless sea, and humanity is bound together on one ship, the planet Earth. Humanity will go extinct or survive depending on how well we navigate the dangerous waters ahead.

As our ship the Earth sails through time, surging into the future, it is easy to lose sight of the way to peace. The constellation of peace is a beacon to help us navigate the ruthless sea of time so that we do not become lost, but remain empowered and proactive as we journey to peace. In the following quote, Martin Luther King Jr. explained why we must never apathetically leave our global problems in the hands of time, but proactively wage peace to solve these problems before they drive humanity extinct. Throughout his life, King saw so many kind people avoid rather than embrace struggle, but peace cannot exist without struggle.

We must get rid of the false notion that there is some miraculous quality in the flow of time that inevitably heals all evils. There is only one thing certain about time, and that is that it waits for no one. If it is not used constructively, it passes you by.

In this generation the children of darkness are still shrewder than the children of light. They are always zealous and conscientious in using time for their evil purposes. If they want to preserve segregation and tyranny, they do not wait on time; they make time their fellow conspirator. If they want to defeat a fair housing bill, they don’t say to the public, “Be patient, wait on time, and our cause will win.” Rather, they use time to spend big money, to disseminate half-truths, to confuse the popular mind. But the forces of light cautiously wait, patiently pray and timidly act …

We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation … We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity …

We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” … We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.¹⁰

To discuss the many ways time affects the human condition, in this chapter I have described time as an enemy, thief, untrustworthy custodian of human problems, blank canvas where the masterpieces of human existence can be painted, source of mortality that enables the virtues we admire most in human beings, great mystery, ruthless force that motivates me to behave gently in all the ways time cannot, and the reason we must wage peace with urgency and effectiveness.

As we will discuss next, our strange relationship with time has also resulted in human beings possessing a remarkable ability. We can choose to respond to struggle in a seemingly infinite number of ways, which is an ability that no other species on the planet seems to possess. Some choices leave us defeated and in despair. Other choices lead to glory and greatness. By learning how to put time and struggle to good use, we can empower ourselves with the skills that make glory and greatness more likely.