“I Want Piece”
a poem by Ron Jones
When I was 10 or 11 years old
sometimes I would ājust happen to beā in the kitchen
when Mom fetched a chocolate cake from the oven.
“Wait a few minutes, Ronnie,” Mom would say.
“Youāll get your piece.Ā Just let it cool down a bit.”
I created a ritual for those restless moments.
The routine never varied.
Parading around the kitchenĀ
I would chant:
I want pieceā¦ I want pieceā¦
I want peace between the cowboys and the Indians.
Again and again.
Each time
the same theatrical march,
the same sing-song cadence:
I want pieceā¦ I want pieceā¦
I want peace between the cowboys and the Indians.
Over and over
until… at last!
My performance was rewarded ā
warm chocolate cake delighting my tongue.
~~~
It was the mid-1950s in northern California, and our prototypical white, suburban, nuclear family would gather around the glowing black-and-white screen most weeknights. TV Westerns were a staple in those early years of television. And I remember how it used to bother me that āthe cowboys and the Indiansā always seemed to be fighting.
I performed this kitchen refrain countless times during that year or two of my youth, and Iāve repeated it out loud hundreds of times since. It remains deeply ingrained in my psyche today. I can still hear it in my head like it was yesterday.
I came to understand this oft-repeated childās play on words as an early expression of an inborn and enduring hunger, not for chocolate cake ā well, that too ā but to live in a peaceful world, a world where people are kind to each other, helpful and cooperative, loving and forgiving. And it seemed obvious to me then that life not only should be like this, but could be like this.
Like all children who grow into adolescence, I was exposed more and more frequently to the sad fact that people were not always kind and helpful, to put it mildly. Indeed, we could be downright mean to each other and even unspeakably cruel to our fellow human beings.
‘Welcome to the real world,’ I have been told so many times in so many ways over the years, right up to the present. And perhaps thatās a serviceable rationalization for ‘manās inhumanity to man’ for some people, which I understand. But it was not and is not for me.
And I never lost my childhood conviction that it does not have to be this way.
~~~
Beginning in my early 20s, my youthful āI want peaceā passion and deep-seated belief that it does not have to be this way matured into an unwavering, idiosyncratic, lifelong pursuit of self-knowledge, always coupled with and fueled by an intense desire to live in a better world and contribute to the greater good.
For many years I was uncertain about how personal development and social progress relate to each other, wondering at first if they even did connect in a meaningful way. But over time it became increasingly clear that these two fronts of change are intimately, inextricably intertwined. And that the highest goal of personal / spiritual / consciousness development is not to become a better human being, but to become a better fellow human being.
~~~