I know it sounds like a cliché, but isn’t it what we all really want? To be able to live our lives in peace and quiet, minding our everyday lives? Send our children to school, go to work, spend time with our family and friends, and live in a safe neighbourhood. Having a roof to sleep under, and food on the table.

Unfortunately, too many people don’t have this. With wars raging, failed crops, poverty and power-hungry people, who do whatever they can to grab power, and then to keep it, regardless of the well-being of others.

There’s Putin who decided to invade Ukraine, for reasons that are still obscure to me. There’s Israel who’s relentlessly bombing Gaza, claiming “in self-defence”. While Hamas leaders are most likely safe somewhere else, far away, while the civilian population has nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

There’s Taliban who came back into power in Afghanistan, depriving women of the scares rights they had been able to obtain during the past twenty years. And the men too, for that matter. No more freedom for anyone, except the Taliban themselves.

The war in Sudan, causing thousands to flee, causing so much pain and trauma. The refugees in Libya, desperate to cross the Mediterranean in the hope of a better life in Europe. Many of them will never make it, and for those who do, life will not necessarily improve.

Still it’s only the top of the iceberg.

Peace and love, it’s what we all seek. It’s what we need, what we want. Some of us are so fortunate to be born in countries where we take this more or less for granted. We don’t need to worry about bombs, or our houses being raided by neither soldiers nor fanatics during the night. We sleep in peace. We have food on the table. And still we don’t seem to do much to stop wars or to distribute our resources better, so other people don’t have to starve.

It’s not in the capacity of you and me alone to do something about it, but if more voices are raised, if more people demand from their politicians to come up with a better plan for distributing the resources, if more people demand of their politicians to put more pressure to end wars, one day peace and love might prosper and replace fear, starvation and wars.