Burning Beneath

Today I found myself sitting with these three words, not trying to define them, but trying to feel how they live together.

During the Walk for Peace yesterday, in the cold streets downtown, surrounded by people who simply showed up because they care, I began to notice how connection, love, and peace move through small moments.

At one point, a car was honking behind another car that hesitated when the traffic light turned yellow. The sound carried frustration, urgency, impatience. I walked toward the car, knocked gently on the window, and handed the driver a rose. No words, just a smile exchanged between strangers. In that moment something shifted. The tension softened, the faces relaxed, and the noise disappeared.

Connection appeared first, simple and human. One person reaching another.

From connection, love naturally followed, not the dramatic kind, but the quiet choice to respond with kindness instead of irritation. Love in its simplest form is care for another human being, even when they are a stranger.

And then peace settled in, quietly, almost unnoticed, like calm water after a ripple fades.

It did not feel like three separate things. It felt like one movement.

Connection opening the door, love stepping through it, peace filling the room.

Or maybe it happens in another order. Maybe peace within us allows love to exist, and love makes connection possible. There is no clear beginning and no clear end. They live together, depend on one another, and cannot survive in isolation.

Connection is like the body, love like the heart, peace like the mind. The body cannot live without the heart, the heart cannot live without the mind, and the mind cannot exist without the body. Each one supports the other, quietly, constantly, without effort.

Perhaps human life works the same way.

When connection disappears, loneliness grows. When love disappears, life becomes mechanical. When peace disappears, everything feels heavy.

But when the three exist together, even briefly, life feels simple again.

It makes me imagine a world where people live this way naturally, communities where individuals care for one another without competition, where giving and receiving are balanced, where people contribute what they can and trust that others will do the same. Not a perfect world, just a human one.

Maybe connection, love, and peace are not goals to reach, but conditions to remember.

They were always there, waiting in small moments, like a flower passed through a car window on a cold afternoon.