Peace of Mind
If you could ask for one thing from Santa this year, what would it be? A new car? The winning numbers for the lottery? To be cured of an incurable illness? A do-over on a big mistake that you made in the past? I’ll bet that despite how attractive many of those things sound, many people would wish for peace of mind. Peace of mind is so elusive these days, but something for which we all yearn.
I ran across an interesting article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology entitled “Peace of Mind: A Role in Unnecessary Care,” where the authors addressed the observation that many medical decisions are made by patients and their physicians to obtain peace of mind. In some cases, these medical decisions lead to riskier and perhaps unnecessary treatments. For example, a cancer patient may choose a more aggressive surgery or undertake difficult chemotherapy without proven survival benefit to “give myself the best chance to beat this” or “to make sure that we get it all out.” This manner of decision-making seems to be driven more by relieving anxiety or worry about the future, rather than on real chance of benefit based on data from clinical trial research. But it also speaks to the great lengths to which we will go to try to obtain peace of mind.
In this holiday season, I wonder whether we should rather be seeking “peace of heart.” The mind bounces all over the place, and can seem like its whole purpose is to manufacture worries and anxieties about the future, and regrets and judgments about the past. Never content with settling in the present moment, the mind feels useless if its gears are not grinding on some issue. But the heart knows differently than the mind. The heart better understands the things that keep us rooted right in the present moment. Things like love, joy, contentment, and gratitude. It is quite hard, if not nearly impossible, to be worrying or feeling regret at the same time that the heart is experiencing one of these emotions. If we can find such peace in our hearts, we will allow ourselves to be grounded in something solid and lasting, something beyond the mind that always finds worries to stew on even in the best of circumstances. So perhaps when we focus on peace of mind, we are really focusing on the wrong organ. It is peace of heart that lets us look outward to others with connection, companionship, and generosity. In this way, we can better live the beautitful carol of the angels on Christmas morning, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will (Luke 2:14).” May you have a blessed Christmas and holiday season!
