“One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal… but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Peace Team is an International Action Network spearheaded by Olympic Athletes. We believe it is possible for all people to live in peace, and are willing to do our part each day to make it happen. Olympians know that ordinary people achieve extraordinary things by aligning passion, vision, and action. The universal principle can be applied to creating peace, as well as to winning Olympic events.
- PASSION – A strong emotion providing high levels of energy and creativity
- VISION – A crystal clear image of the goal
- ACTION – The willingness to do something each day toward that goal
Only one of these elements is missing from achieving peace in our lifetime. Passion already exists; people everywhere want to live in peace. Action is a step people would willingly take if they knew what to do and believed it could make a difference. The missing element is vision. Very few people have a clear image of what it looks like to live in peace–personally, in their communities, or globally. Without the vision, it is impossible to create an effective strategy to achieve the goal.
U.S. Olympic pentathlete, Marilyn King, and Soviet gold medalist, Elena Petushkova, agreed that this universal principle is the key to superior achievement in all fields. Marilyn King and Elena Petushkova dared to imagine this principle working globally to bring about world peace. Soon, Robert Muller, former Asshistant Secretary of the United Nations, and futurist, Willis Harman, President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, joined them. The Peace Team was born.
“Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself”.
– Chief Seattle
To be a member of the Peace Team is to be courageous, to be hopeful, and to be committed to daily, conscious action in the pursuit of the dream. When we envision a world in which peace has already been achieved, devoting time each day to vividly imagining it, we make a powerful contribution toward making our vision a reality. The wold’s problems are very complex. no one has all the answers, but each of us has a piece of the answer. You need not dwell on complex problems that are beyond your power to solve. Instead, focus on the contributions you can make. Your efforts, combined with the passion, vision, and action of like-minded people all over the world, will produce the ultimate victory.