To have peace, there must be honesty. Pretend peace isn't peace. It is good you want to live up to your ideals, but a pretense of living up to your ideals is a far cry from living them. I know you want to feel loving, and you don't always feel loving. Sometimes then you have gritted your teeth. I know it is not easy for you. You don't want to dissemble. You don't want to pretend what is not, and yet you do not want to have anything in your heart but love. And so you drum up love, and you try to maintain equanimity, or We could say you feign it.

Perhaps you tell yourself that you must mask your true feelings. Certainly, sometimes it makes sense to simply be polite. You do not run around telling everyone everything that bothers you. Certainly, you want your attention on the fair and fine in life, and yet, you cannot always tamp down your feelings, swallow them as though they do not exist. Not forever can you.

You would be perfectly happy to transcend what ails you if only you could. Meanwhile, you may stifle your feelings. Is it not a law of physics that steam expands? That it cannot be closed up forever?

And so your feelings cannot stay bottled up. Despite your good intentions, your feelings will burst out - in tears, perhaps, or in anger and words you later wish you hadn't spoken.

Perhaps it will be good to assign a time, perhaps once a week, when you and your loved ones will meet to amiably discuss what you are feeling, and what your loved ones may also be feeling. Such a regular meeting sets up a framework where your feelings and needs can be addressed amicably. Such an assigned meeting takes the sting out. It is friendly and easy-going. It is not a confrontation. It is a meeting that acknowledges that both of you are vulnerable human beings and that sometimes you are subject to frustration. It is a meeting that allows for openness and the effusion of pure hearts.

It becomes not a question of who or what is right but rather what is going on.

What a wonderful thing such a meeting would be in the workplace. Employer and employee meet one on one to discuss what each can do for the other. Such a meeting recognizes that there are needs that can be met. It recognizes the value of open safe communication. With such meetings, there will be no need for flare-ups. With such meetings, employees will not be complaining, nor will employers. There would not be a need to complain. There would be no talking behind one another's back.

Think, if instead of parent teacher conferences, there were student teacher conferences, one on one. What if the teacher asked the student: "What can I do to make our classroom meaningful to you? What can I do for you? Please tell me, and I will do it." What need for outbursts would there be in the classroom then? What need would there be for outbursts at all? Who would want them?

A simple thing, an arrangement whereby two sentient beings meet to see how things are going and what can be done to make them better. Two people meeting with a common goal. No longer are they stuffed into the roles of teacher and student. The teacher isn't controlling the student, and the student has no need to rebel. Two caring individuals meet. They express. Perhaps they laugh. They breathe better, for two hearts are meeting with divine purpose.