Peace - the right word

I have some linguistic issues around this time of year and they are around the word peace. Peace on earth and goodwill towards all people.

What does Peace really mean? The Hebrew word Shalom (שָׁלוֹם) means peace, hello, goodbye and also to a state of wellbeing. In English, peace is a lack of strife between two parties particularly between humans and also with God. It is much less used to refer to the well-being, welfare or safety of an individual or a group of individuals.

I regret to say I do not believe that peace is freedom from stress. Hans Selye the father of the psychology of stress identified both distress and eustress (later developed by Richard Lazarus). Selye used the terms to refer to whether one relates to good or bad news, whether the impulse is positive or negative. The distress tends to lead to negative responses, such as paralysis or unhelpful results and eustress is a good stress which may lead to action to good ends. One of my former students is now extremely stressed in returning to her homeland and the pace of life, yet it is still possible for her to experience peace.

Mahatma Gandhi was a peaceful protester, who somehow managed to get rid of colonial rule of India without a bloody revolution. Gandhi insightfully claimed that if an oppressive society lacked violence, it was not peaceful, because of the injustice of the oppression remained. However he also saw peace not as an end or goal but as means: peace by a spinning wheel and not with a rifle. Societies attain justice and care by peace.

Shalom embodies a sense of right functioning, a means rather than goal. In the natural world shalom is not the absence of bacteria and viruses but that the human bodies are able function as they should and diseases do not have an effect. The lion and lamb shall lie down together. Cells in shalom would not go their own way and create cancers. Peace is everything in right relationship, right place, right attitudes and mindset.