Violent peace

Over the last few months, I have been volunteering with this lady who conducts music workshops for children aged between ten and fifteen. She has a modest grant of $500 from Manhattan Cultural Council and is required to conduct workshops on peace. While it was real fun to work with kids and peek into their creative minds, it also brought forth a picture I had been missing – maybe because I seldom interact with children.

Some of the songs/ poems the groups of kids had come up with were amazing. There was home peace, animal peace, brain peace and so on. However, there was this group which came up with a song, whose first two lines ran thus –

This world will see peace
when Bin Laden is beheaded
…

Needless to say, I choose not to quote further. This is sample good enough. Obviously, we ended up not using the song for the concert. However, I kept thinking why they came up with this song, despite our repeated emphasis that this was a peace workshop. Do they not understand what peace is? Perhaps they don’t. The media blares from all fronts about the Iraq peace process, Middle East Peace process, South East Asian Peace Process and also attributes numerous deaths and civilian casualties to these. Thanks to the Internet, children have access to all news and events in their entirety.

When I think carefully, it’s not surprising they came up with a song like this. At this impressionable age, we are setting such a bad example for them. They have come to believe that violence uproots violence, death is paid back with death, and life is not valuable at all. And it’s not their fault. We need to pause and think what we’re doing. Besides ruining the present, we are sending terribly wrong signals to the next generation. If this goes on, in a few decades there will be nothing left to salvage. It is our responsibility to leave for them a world that is tolerant and peaceful. If you interact with children, I request you to take a few minutes to tell them what peace is, give them a broader picture of what’s going on in this world and why certain things are not right. I don’t have to elaborate and it’s never too late.