Today, while reading the Salvadoran newspaper El País, I came across an article that made me stop and think in a way headlines rarely do. It told of Buddhist monks walking barefoot for peace. They weren’t protesting, demanding, or condemning; they were simply walking. In a world filled with anger, division, and violence, that image quietly moved me. The group set off last January from Texas with a clear, ambitious goal: to travel more than 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) to reach the capital, Washington, D.C.
I stopped for a moment, feeling that familiar sense of connection to something bigger, and thought about how meaning often arrives quietly, not through force. As I kept reading, I noticed how much of the news is filled with hatred, war, and fear. Recent headlines echo with the ongoing strife in regions like Ukraine, where conflict disrupts daily life, or in Myanmar, where civil unrest is a persistent shadow. It feels like conflict is everywhere. The more I reflect, the more I see this isn’t new. Looking back, I can’t find a time when the world was truly at peace.
Empires have come and gone, borders have shifted, and ideas have changed, but war always seems to remain. We call it different things, try to justify or explain it, but it never really disappears. That’s a heavy thought, but reading about these monks, I felt something different. It wasn’t a loud or triumphant hope, but something quieter and maybe more real.
There’s something very disarming about bare feet on the ground. They aren’t threatening and don’t try to be better than anyone else. They witness. When so many people are shouting for attention, walking in silence feels almost radical. It shows that peace isn’t forced or argued into existence, but lived out, step by step.
I don’t think these monks believe they can end war just by walking. That isn’t the point. What struck me is that they choose to live openly in peace, with vulnerability, and without trying to draw attention. By doing this, they remind us that peace has never come from conquest or domination. If it comes at all, it starts within us, in how we move through the world and treat each other.
Living in El Salvador has made me think more about these questions. This country has its own history of violence and struggle, but it also knows resilience, kindness, and quiet strength. Maybe that’s why this story meant so much to me today. With so much unrest in the world, these barefoot steps felt like a gentle way to say no to hatred.
I don’t have answers for why humanity seems stuck in endless conflict. I only know that moments like this—a simple article, a quiet walk, a pause in the noise—remind me that another way of living has always existed alongside the violence. It just never made itself loud. But perhaps the real question is, what steps, however small, can we take in our own lives to listen more closely to this quieter path? By doing so, might we begin to weave peace through our own existence?
Maybe peace has always been here, quietly weaving through our lives like the silent brush of a footstep on soft earth.
Maybe we just haven’t been listening.
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