Let’s say there’s two towns: Crazy Town and Peace Town.
Crazy Town is chaos and confusion and never knowing who you are or where you stand because everything there is so mixed up that you don’t know which way is up and which way is down. And it hurts and it makes you cry and stamp your feet in anger, but you mistake that feeling for excitement and passion and wind up craving it like an addiction because it’s the only way you know how to feel alive.
But after awhile, Crazy Town starts to make you shut down. Because how can you open your heart in a place where nothing makes sense? You keep chasing after the high but the high quickly turns into despair.
Peace Town is quieter, calmer. It’s not flashy and in your face like it is in Crazy Town. It’s soft and sweet and if you’re from Crazy Town you might make fun of Peace Town because you think the sweetness is saccharine and the softness should be replaced with hardness like it is in Crazy Town. Like, the people living in Peace Town are weak and boring. Like, they don’t know how to live. When really the people in Peace Town do know how live, and a lot of times they came from Crazy Town themselves, but had to learn how to live in a new way: by walking in peace and embracing it in order to free themselves from the chaos of Crazy Town.
And that’s why someone from Crazy Town can never live in Peace Town unless they have a change of heart. Peace isn’t an easy choice. It’s far easier these days to live in Crazy Town than it is to live anywhere else, and many people never escape its clutches. They die howling and screaming if they’re one of the lucky ones, or curled up in a shell if they’re one of the unlucky ones. Because Crazy Town shatters everything it touches, especially human hearts.
Peace Town is harder to find, and harder to live in, especially when the world around you is by and large stuck in Crazy Town to one degree or another. But if you make it your home, you’ll begin to heal. You’ll begin to see Crazy Town for what it really is: a sad, broken circus full of sad, broken people doing whatever they can to try to distract themselves from the void in their hearts.
Peace Town may not be flashy. But it’s peace. And if you know peace, you’ll never want to leave Peace Town for Crazy Town again.