Peace is indeed harder than war

In a speech in Northern Ireland, President Obama encouraged young people to live for peace:

Ultimately, peace is just not about politics.  It’s about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the  divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don’t exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation. ...

It's within your power to bring about change.  Whether you are a good neighbor to someone from the other side of past battles -- that’s up to you.  Whether you treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve -- that’s up to you.  Whether you let your kids play with kids who attend a different church -– that’s your decision.  Whether you take a stand against violence and hatred, and tell extremists on both sides that no matter how many times they attack the peace, they will not succeed –- that is in your hands.  And whether you reach your own outstretched hand across dividing lines, across peace walls, to build trust in a spirit of respect –- that’s up to you.  The terms of peace may be negotiated by political leaders, but the fate of peace is up to each of us. ...

When those who took a chance on peace got started, they didn’t have a successful model to emulate.  They didn’t know how it would work.  But they took a chance.  And so far, it has succeeded.  And the first steps are the hardest and requires the most courage.  The rest, now, is up to you.
 
“Peace is indeed harder than war,” the Irish author Colum McCann recently wrote.  “And its constant fragility is part of its beauty.  A bullet need happen only once, but for peace to work we need to be reminded of its existence again and again and again.”