My very first encounter with the matter of peace in contemporary world must have happened

when I was about 13 and when I discovered a band promoting a trend called Music with meaning. The
band, namely Outlandish, consisted from three members with different nationalities and religious
beliefs who wanted to send a message to the entire world regarding the stringent need for peace and
tolerance in a society that had become more dark and twisted than ever.

I recall some of their most suggestive lyrics and probably also some of the most suggestive lyrics
ever written and put into a song:

You worry about your education

And the bills you have to pay
I worry about my vulnerable life
And if I'll survive another day. [...]

Terror is the robbery of my land

And the torture of my mother
The imprisonment of my innocent father
The bullet in my baby brother

The bulldozers and the tanks

The gasses and the guns
The bombs that fall outside my door
All due to your funds

You blame me for defending myself

Against the ways of my enemies
I'm terrorized in my own land
And I'm the terrorist.

The song was debating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that had been going on for decades on end
and that had made and enormous number of victims innocent people that had to pay with their lives
the foolishness of those to whom a border was of greater importance than the tranquility of their own
souls. At that time, I was but a child with very little -if any - knowledge of the problems going on in the
world around me. Strange as it may seem, my childish passion for that band was the decisive factor that
helped me become more aware of the real first world problems, because I began to search
information on the matters they sang about.

Becoming friends with three half-Palestinian half-Romanian sisters represented, however, the
apex of my peace story. This event took place at a concert of the aforementioned band in Bucharest,
Romania a concert where, by the way, I had very hardly managed to come, but this could make the
topic of a different story. Briefly, I was invited to the concert by the band itself, because they knew I was
a huge fan and since I had sent them an email telling them how sorry I was that I couldnt make it, they
had me there as a special guest with no entrance fee, taking me on stage with them and also paying
for my accommodation at a hotel, because I wasnt residing in Bucharest. Im pretty sure it was a matter
of fate, because none of these would have happened if the band hadnt read my email. That email also
brought me an unexpected friendship with the three sisters, who were also Outlandish fans. We
exchanged phone numbers and email addresses and we started talking on a regular basis.
 They were born and raised in Palestine and this is why their stories, relating genuine events,
offered me a clearer perspective upon the matter of peace in modern world. Not only had I heard of
people being murdered on political and religious grounds, but I also knew people who had lost their
relatives in those conflicts and who were grieving; I could see the pain in their eyes, I could hear the
suffering in their voices. My friends had been directly affected by the Israeli-Palestinian war and, all of a
sudden, I felt that it was my duty to share their pain, given the nature of our relationship, which had
become quite close.

But was there anything more that I could have done, other than showing my empathy and giving
them moral support? Lets not forget that I still was a child. A child who, the following year, also
happened to take part in a summer camp organized by the American Peace Corps in Romania. This was
possible by virtue of the American volunteers - a bunch of young and spirited people, most of them
teaching English in small cities, among which my own hometown. In that camp we were taught a lot of
useful things in order to help our communities thrive and when it finished, we had to come up with a
project of our own, putting into effect everything we had learned during those classes. Our teams
project was named Reducing teen violence in our town and its aim can be easily deduced from the
title. What did we actually do? We went to schools and kindergartens, shared flyers and organized
creative contests in which the participants were asked to submit their work on the theme of our project.

Sadly, the feedback didnt rise to our expectations. It is true that we received a few creative
writings, which we awarded with symbolic prizes, but very soon, our project slipped into oblivion. I will
be honest and confess that the guilt cant be exclusively assigned to the people around us, but to
ourselves, the very creators of the project, some of whom had found other projects to take part in or
who were busy studying for high school final exams. However, it left a bitter taste in my mouth, making
me wonder about the real meaning of everything around us and about my purpose on Earth. I must
remind you again that I still was a child, although one of 15, not 13.

Three years went by as swiftly as the wind and there I was, without having found my vocation
yet. One thing I kept in mind, though: whatever that would have been, it must have been meaningful. It
even occurred to me that I could go and volunteer abroad, just like the young Americans from the Peace
Corps, but what about my other hopes and dreams of a flourishing career? What about my family? Did I
value peace so much that I could have given everything else up and started all over? Was I supposed
tostay here for college and then leave? And, the option that appealed to me the most: was it even
remotely possible to have it both ways?

To my luck, there was. Without the least bit of anticipation, the lightning of revelation struck
me. There was a permanent need for peace everywhere, not only in the Middle East or Africa, so, I could
have fulfilled my duty without being an immigrant at least until I was going to be more prepared for
that mission. There are ongoing conflicts everywhere around us and never enough people to mitigate
them. How come I hadnt seen it before, even if it was so exposed to view? It is so close to all of us, it
actually BELONGS to us and yet, no one realizes that...

our bodies are constant battlefields; there are ongoing wars between the cells of our immune system,
which are trained to defend us like some very skilled soldiers, and the foreign cells belonging to bacteria,
viruses or parasites, which claim the territories of our cells and tissues just like some fierce conquerors. I
want to introduce you to a couple of these diligent soldiers, who fulfil their duties most admirably; one
of them is called the macrophage; this is probably the chubbiest guy in the entire infantry, but with good
reason: more often than not, he is the first soldier who takes notice of the presence of invaders and he
is never afraid to use his weapons in order to decimate them. There are, nonetheless, times when the
chubby macrophage alone cannot exterminate the foreign army, but even in those cases, he makes use
of his amazing know-how and secret weapons so that the non-self dare-devil cant find his way out.
Eventually, the intruder is injured so badly that his screams are heard very far away in the distance, by a
different category of good soldiers called lymphocytes. These ones are split into several breeds, but they
always cooperate effectively: some of them are permanently in fighting trim and they kill every
prospective enemy, whereas others shut themselves in bunkers where they secretly manufacture
chemical weapons which they send straight to the battlefield in order to help their fellows sail through
the fight! Not to mention that all these immune soldiers establish an exquisite communication, letting
each other know about every victory, but also about defeats and trying to come up with solutions even
when their mission seems a lost cause.

Sadly, there are also situations when civil wars break out; that is, when the soldiers are wrongly
trained to exterminate the so-called self structures, even though they are normal cells of our own
body, with no intention of doing us any harm. This type of civil war is medically named autoimmune
disease and sometimes, its consequences can be dramatic.

So what?, some of you may righteously ask. So many!, will my reply come forth. Our body
might be a mind-blowing machine, but it remains, nonetheless, a battlefield with limited resources;
every now and then, the pure image of the dove and its olive branch is but a desideratum and some
external help is required for peace to take back its reign. And who else is more legitimate to play the
role of a Deus-ex-machina in this case than doctors?

You may now wonder: all of this is nothing but shooting the breeze, but how do I actually work
for peace? Well, nothing simpler: I work for peace by learning how to make it for now, inside the
human body. In order for me to achieve that, I enrolled in a very strict army called Med School. The
road awaiting me is both tough and long and it takes many sleepless nights, a ton of ambition and
determination and last, but not least, an incessant passion, constantly lit, like a fiery beacon guiding me
through the insurgent ocean of everyday hardship. Youre lost unless you see the bigger picture and
stumble upon scattered pieces of an apparently unsolvable puzzle instead. To me, the bigger picture is
taken somewhere in Africa or in the Middle East, in a military camp where I try to make peace inside the
human bodies of those hurt in a bloody assault. And whilst the peace from outside is a matter that
mostly depends on politicians and other people of authority, the least I can do is make sure that the
kind of peace I can design with my own hands is reestablished whenever needed. Because without the
inner peace both organic and spiritual the outer one is like an oasis in a desert where no one ever
stepped: merely futile.