WORLD PEACE

Give peace a chance is an interesting idea coming from the basketball player who was one of the main combatants in the worst athlete-fan brawl in NBA history. It is not easy to see this man as a 6’7”, 260 lb Gandhi…..this man is formerly known as Ron Artest.

Ron Artest legally changed his name this year to Metta World Peace. Metta, a Buddhist word meaning “loving kindness” and world peace speaks for itself. Part of his thinking was that people might be positively affected by using the term “world peace”. How many times do you think you hear “world peace” at a Lakers game now?….. I think it was a stroke of genius.

I firmly believe that our words carry a certain energy and it has been proven by Dr. Masaru Emoto that when he placed certain words on petry dishes filled with water and later took microscopic pictures of the water crystals, they reflected the energy of the words on the dish. In other words, when he placed “hate” on a dish the crystal was malformed and nasty looking while the dish that had “love” or “peace” on it, the crystal was beautifully symmetric and looked as if it came from a Hallmark card.

So if this holds true, and a celebrity such as World Peace puts those two words out there multiple times a day, maybe just maybe, it can make a difference. I am not suggesting that we all change our names to “world peace” or “love” or “compassion” , although it could be a very interesting proposition. What I am suggesting is for us all to look at what words we use and how we use them. When I read about this name change it really hit me to take a hard look at my language.

It could be easily dismissed as just “semantics” yet I feel there is more to it than that. I know I get lazy with my words sometimes and make comments or use phrases that do not match up with how I want to live my life. On the other hand, you might find a few surprises, like I have with my name……Stanhope. So do you think my journey has to do something with hope?

So what would your name be if your could rename yourself with your mission?…….that is an idea that it is easy for me to be at peace with.