What do you love? Who are you?
“What is the definition of peace?” my teacher asked.
“The absence of fear.” I blurted out without thinking.
Isn’t if funny what sticks in our memory? What seemingly unimportant moments change us?
This was first hour social studies in the spring semester of my senior year of high school. It was the first moment I remember my brain producing what felt like an original thought. I wasn’t spouting out the definition of peace or answering what I thought the teacher wanted. I was stating my definition, my thought on a subject.
Why did it mean so much to me? Because my teacher was surprised by my answer. He looked at me with astonishment. I’d shifted seats from a student just trying to get an “A” to a person who one wanted to engage. I wonder how often teachers see that? And how hard it must be to not have favorite students when someone actually makes your job feel like it has meaning. But that’s another subject for another day.
Peace was and still is an important word to me. I didn’t really understand why until I starting studying the personality typing system, The Enneagram, and discovered I am a “9,” the Peacemaker.
Learning that explained a lot, like:
- why I go with the flow so easily
- why I hate conflict
- why I can see multiple sides of issues
- why I can write better than discuss
- why I am a quiet person
- why I gain strength from nature and quietness
- why I love peaceful moments, crave peaceful moments, need peaceful moments.
“The things that we love tell us what we are.”
-St. Thomas Aquinas
I am a peace-lover, a peacemaker.
What do you love?
Who are you?
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