Peace is a process.

There is balance in personal life, balance in corporate life, balance in international relationships. That balance never implies dominance, for when there is dominance, there is no balance. But where there is unevenness, there can be balance, for again, balance can be seen as a strength to accommodate, to take in, to grow from, to strengthen.

When you pray for balance, you often pray that all will be perfect. One prays for peace with an expectation that real peace will be observed. Peace is a process; it is never a product. One works toward peace if peace is also defined as an accommodation. Peace is not perfection. Peace is not simply the absence of strife. Peace really is the accumulation of energy that allows for a give-and-take, that allows for an ability to endure.

Peace is, of course, about human dignity, but peace often exists, real peace, in the absence of an equality of human dignity being affirmed. You can have balance even in war time, or you can have imbalance when all is peaceful. The peace is the who; it is not only the what. When you achieve balance, you achieve an ability to deal with the varieties of how peace is accommodated.

Much of what you learn in human life is really devoted to a kind of balance, an ability to see several sides of an argument, not acknowledging that one side must prevail but rather acknowledging that all sides have a piece of what is needed for accommodation. That is balance.