It is not about the day. As John F. Kennedy said,

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

It is about the essence of liveable life and co-existence, the only way it makes sense. The only way it feels right.

World Peace Day is celebrated all over the globe on 21 September, ever since the UN General Assembly established it in 1981 and then designated it as a period of non-violence and ceasefire two decades later, commemorated worldwide through education and public awareness related to peace, devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, with and among all nations and peoples. But

it isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it. – Eleanor Roosevelt

And working on it does not mean ringing the UN Peace Bell once a year at the New York UN Headquarters. Though it is a moving piece, cast from coins donated by children from all over the world, save Africa, chiming a reminder of all the lives lost in and to war, voluntary and involuntary sacrifices on the altar of the love of power, with the inscription “Long live absolute world peace”.

I feel we are the luckier ones. We who have the strength to believe:

We’re all golden sunflowers inside. – Allen Ginsberg

Though it is a bittersweet fortune to belong to people whose beliefs are centered around love, peace, respect of one another and all that is embraced by ‘flower power’, while we see and experience the results of the actions of so many of our fellow Earthians who have yet to see the wood for the trees… There are still too many of us on our planet, and many in positions of power, who are guided or blindly led by fear-fuelled hatred, self-centered greed or compassionless ignorance. How many times, how many ways does humanity have to suffer the lack of peace to hurt enough to see no other way than a peaceful one? How many times have we yet to globally and uniformly realize that where there is no love, there is no life, to counter-phrase Mahatma Ghandi.

I feel we are the luckier ones. We, growing in number, instinctively and consciously anchored around a flower power attitude. An attitude that first sprung to life in protest against the Vietnam War back in 1965 Berkeley, California when the sowers of the seeds of our present day psychedelic tribal subculture, demonstrated against war and bloodshed using Ginsberg’s methods, also advocated in his November ‘65 essay titled Demonstration Or Spectacle As Example, As Communication Or How To Make a March/Spectacle. He recommended the use of props like flowers, toys, candy, flags and musical instruments and even that marchers bring crosses that they could hold up in front in case of an attack from the pro-war Hell’s Angels, like in Dracula movies. And what irony, I must add… Hell’s Angels. Give a thought to that for a moment, with all its connotations. He also advised, if violence threatened to erupt, that the sound system blast “I Want to Hold Your Hand” from the Beatles and the marchers burst into dance.
Yet the actual term ‘flower power’ is not tied to Ginsberg, but to Abbie Hoffman, activist and co-founder of the radical street theater group, the Yippies, with Jerry Rubin, who organized the Flower Brigade parade honoring the soldiers in Vietnam in May 1967, “armed” with flowers, flags and pink LOVE posters. And in response to being attacked and beaten by bystanders, Hoffman wrote in WIN magazine:

Plans are being made to mine the East River with daffodils. Dandelion chains are being wrapped around induction centers… The cry of ‘Flower Power’ echoes through the land. We shall not wilt.

I feel we are the luckier ones, we shall not wilt. We understand what Gandhi meant by

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

And the flower power that became the central symbol of counterculture then, is perhaps becoming more and more the life force of pro-culture today. As more and more of us honor World Peace Day each and every 365 (and an extra for leap years) days of the year.