Today will be my peaceful day.

Not because the world is peaceful. Because I cannot help build peaceful solutions from a place of fear and reactivity.

I want to say this early and clearly. I am not telling anyone how to feel, what to think, or what to do. I am writing about my own experience. I am writing about what I am trying to live, in a moment when living it feels both incredibly hard and incredibly vital.

Normally, I am here talking about Human Design. This blog is different. What Human Design has taught me about myself is this. As a 6/2 in my role model phase, people tend to notice what I do, not just what I say. And with the Channel of Inspiration defined, I have learned that my contribution is not just my words. It is my way of being. So if I want to bring peace, I know I must be at peace. I have to live it in real time, not just admire it as an idea.

Today will be my peaceful day.

I have been repeating this line like a mantra ever since I first heard Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, one of the Buddhist monks on the Walk for Peace, invite people to write it down each morning and look at it throughout the day. Their pilgrimage is moving across the country on foot, headed toward Washington, D.C. next month. In the middle of everything happening right now, that one simple sentence has felt like an anchor.

I have watched myself catch fire emotionally in a moment. Reactive, tight, combustible. And then I come back to this statement. Not by bypassing what I feel, but by returning to my center. This practice has become a pathway back to what I so often call radical self-trust. The inner knowing that I can be with what is true in the moment without abandoning myself.

And I need that right now.

I am writing this the day after Alex Pretti was shot and killed in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents. From what has been reported and what many of us have watched, he was filming and stepped in as a woman was shoved during the confrontation with ICE. He was pepper-sprayed, forced to the ground, and shot in the back multiple times. He was a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, caring for veterans. 

His story matters. Who he was matters. The details matter. And those details are being shared everywhere right now, on every platform, on every feed, with every replay. That is not the purpose of this blog. The purpose of this blog is to name what is happening inside me as I try to live in the middle of it without losing myself.

As I write this, I feel conflicted between what could sound like minimizing the tragedy and what could feel like fueling the emotional flames, neither of which is my intention. I am committed to maintaining my internal peace, and I need to say this plainly. That commitment does not mean I am not angry. It does not mean I am numb. It does not mean I am condoning what is happening. It means I am choosing how I show up. Because when I shine my light into the world, I want it to come from peace and calm, not fear. I want to be more like a candle or a lantern, steady enough to help people see, instead of a pulsing searchlight that just makes everyone feel more afraid and on edge.

Still, there is a fear that lives in the background of this choice. A fear that if I am not reacting from outrage, I am sending the message that I do not care.

So I have tried to wait for clarity the way I often do when I am emotional or overwhelmed. But what if clarity does not come in the form I want? What if there is not a neat answer that makes this make sense?

Here is what I am realizing. There may not be a clear answer for how to fix any of this. There may not be a perfect sentence that lands on the exact right side of history and also preserves our humanity. And we do not need more people firing off knee-jerk solutions just to discharge emotion.

What we need, what I need, is more capacity.

We need more people learning how to be with emotion without becoming emotionally reactive.

Emotions are real. They matter. They belong. I am not interested in burying them.

But I am also seeing, in real time, how quickly emotional reactivity turns into a kind of mass nervous-system injury. We watch the footage. We absorb the fear. We echo the rage. We repost the grief. We argue with strangers. We sever relationships. And somehow we call that “doing something,” even when it is not actually moving anything toward change.

So right now, I am sitting in my anger, my sadness, my frustration, and my helplessness. And today that is enough.

And my role today is not to hand out solutions from the peak of a wave. My role is to find my center again, and recommit to my pledge.

Today will be my peaceful day.

There is an image that keeps coming to mind. The Titanic, going down, and the band continuing to play.

They knew the ship was sinking. They were not in denial. They were not pretending everything was fine. They were doing something else that mattered in that moment. They were helping the people around them stay calm enough to keep moving, calm enough to make decisions, calm enough to reach for a lifeboat.

That is what this practice feels like to me.

It feels like we are on the Titanic. The systems we know are going down.

Anger at not enough lifeboats is real. Anger at injustice is real. Anger at the systems that created this is real. I am not questioning that.

But anger alone is not going to save us from drowning in the moment. Panic does not build lifeboats. Outrage does not calm a nervous system. And if we are not careful, the emotional storm becomes its own kind of sinking.

So I am trying to keep playing the song that helps me stay steady. Not because it fixes everything, but because steadiness is what allows me to do what I can actually do.

Today will be my peaceful day.

Where I live, I cannot even go outside because there is literal ice on the roads and sidewalks. The irony is not lost on me. I am trapped indoors by one kind of ice, while other people are living in fear of another, one that is so much more treacherous.

How do I reconcile my commitment to loving all of humanity while witnessing some people do real harm to others? How do I stay rooted in love without going numb or becoming naive, especially while the aftermath of Alex Pretti’s death replays across my screen?

And then there is the added layer. We live in an age of AI, where so much of what we see can be manipulated. That makes some people dismiss what is real. It makes other people cling even harder to what they believe is real. And everywhere you look, anger is multiplying.

I am not here to tell anyone not to be angry. Telling an angry person to calm down is rarely helpful.

But I am watching what happens when anger consumes someone, when it becomes identity, when it becomes adrenaline, when it becomes the only language they speak, without any meaningful action underneath it. That kind of constant activation attacks our nervous systems as deeply as the original source of anger.

Today will be my peaceful day.

Another thing I have learned through understanding my own Human Design is that the questions I ask are my superpower. Specifically, I question patterns and past perspectives. I let confusion do its work until it expands my own consciousness, and sometimes the consciousness of the people around me. So when I feel called to speak, even from a platform that is small, it is not because I believe I have the answer. It is because I feel a responsibility to use my voice well. I want to be an upstander. I want to name what is wrong clearly. I also know I can do that more clearly when I am grounded in my own peace. I will not become a member of an angry mob.

So when I feel the urge to post, react, argue, or “do something” immediately, I am practicing a different pause. First I am reminding myself,

Today will be my peaceful day.

Then I am asking myself questions that help me stay honest and stay clean.

Questions I am asking myself right now:

• What am I feeling, specifically? Not what do I think, but what do I feel in my body?
• Can I give myself time to actually feel it before adding to the reactivity already happening in those around me and online?
• Do I even know what I want to say? If I do not, would it be more honest to say that?
• Is what I am about to share moving us toward the change I want, or is it mainly adding to the noise and deepening the divide?

Even as I write this, I am aware of how easy it is to sound preachy, like I am telling people what to do. I am not. I am naming what I am practicing, because I need it. Because I am trying to stay human inside a moment that can quickly dehumanize all of us.

I understand the posts that say, “If you still support this, unfriend me now.” I truly do. In a time when things have become life or death for so many, I understand why people draw hard lines.

And I am also asking this. Where do we find peace inside that kind of thinking? Are we actually ready to perpetuate war inside our own communities? Some people are already speaking as if that is inevitable, as if the only option left is total division.

But we are living in a time with more ability to communicate than any generation before us. We can hear real voices. We can seek context. We can talk across distance. We can choose dialogue instead of performance.

Do we really want to use this ability to shout at each other?

I do not have the answers.

But I know I will not find the answers that are true for me if I abandon myself to the collective emotional storm.

So I am returning again to what I can hold.

Today will be my peaceful day.

Not as a way to escape what is happening. As a way to stay human inside it.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, maybe try this with me, even for one day. Write the sentence down in the morning. Look at it throughout the day. Notice what changes, not in the world, but in you. Notice how you respond, what you choose, what you amplify, and what you do not.

Peace has to begin somewhere. Today, I am choosing to let it begin with me.

Today will be my peaceful day.