There are days when my peace feels like it belongs to everyone but me.
It rises and falls depending on who shows up, who doesn’t, and what I think that means about my worth.
And then I read this:
“Be so rooted in yourself that nobody’s absence or presence can disturb your peace.”
The words felt both aspirational and impossible. Like a destination I’ll never quite reach.
But then I wondered: what if being “rooted” doesn’t mean unbothered, but self-returning?
What if peace isn’t the absence of disturbance, but the practice of finding your way back to yourself after being shaken?
The goal isn’t to become so solid that nothing moves us. It’s to develop roots deep enough that even when we sway, even when we bend under the weight of someone’s absence or the sting of their presence, we know how to return to our own ground.
Peace, then, isn’t something I maintain in relation to others. It’s something I cultivate by seeing myself more clearly—by recognising when I’ve handed my worth over to someone else’s validation, and gently taking it back.
It’s the difference between never being disturbed and knowing how to disturb yourself less.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be so rooted that nothing shakes me. But perhaps I can become rooted enough to know that being shaken doesn’t mean being uprooted.
That my peace doesn’t have to be permanent to be real.
And that coming back to myself, again and again, is its own form of strength.
