The following is adapted from Healthy Minds, Healthy Nation by Gilbert Martina.
Peace is not something that simply happens to us. It is something we choose, practice, and sometimes fight for, and that distinction matters more than most people realize.
Being a peacemaker means committing to understand others before worrying about being understood yourself. It means anchoring your actions in the general interest rather than personal gain, and choosing to live in a spirit of oneness rather than ego. Peacemakers are not passive observers. They are active, gentle, patient, and firmly grounded in truth.
This lesson did not come from a textbook. It came from a playground in Curaçao, where, as a kindergartner, I witnessed a boy being held down and humiliated by three classmates and stepped forward without hesitation. Armed only with questions and my mother's quiet wisdom, I turned a scene of cruelty into a conversation about why we come to school in the first place: to learn, to talk, and to help each other. The boys listened. They let him go.
That same instinct carried forward into my adult life. Years later, leading a team of twenty professionals through a high-stakes software project that had gone off the rails, I introduced a simple but powerful tool borrowed from indigenous tradition: the talking stick. With a pen standing in as the stick, team members took turns speaking while everyone else listened, not just with their ears but with their hearts. The result? A room full of people who had been yelling at each other transformed into a focused group ready to put in weekend hours to meet the deadline. The project launched on time.
These lessons were also tested at home, in the most personal of circumstances. At thirteen years old, I witnessed my father strike my mother, and the family separation that followed forced me to reckon with something far more painful than a playground dispute. Yet even across the thirty-plus years of distance that followed, my story ultimately bends toward forgiveness. Before my father passed away in 2023, we reconciled, spending the final years of his life as close friends.
Our lives are like a train. People board and people leave, and we never know when any stop will be the last. The goal is to make the ride as meaningful as possible for everyone on it.
For more advice on building peace within yourself, your relationships, and your community, you can find Healthy Minds, Healthy Nation on Amazon.
Gilbert Bernardo Martina is founder of the upcoming “Blenchi Sanctuary,” a spiritual wellness center that helps people transform their wounds into wisdom. He trained with Alberto Villoldo and Marcela Lobos at Four Winds Society, following the ancient shamanic healing teaching of the Q’ero from Peru. Born and raised on the island of Curaçao and educated in the Netherlands, Martina holds master’s degrees in chemical engineering and business administration from the University of Amsterdam and Webster University in Leiden. He is married to his queen, Chantal Martina Seferina. Together, they have five children: Jairzinho, Jorzinho, Aimee, Antoine, and Angele.
(Royalty free image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/side-view-of-men-facing-each-other-6814536/, Credit: cottonbro studio)