Turning the Page
Our journeys with peace are often anything but linear, shaped slowly by learning, reflection, and experience. That’s certainly been true for me. Three educational peacebuilding trips to Kosovo (one virtual) — in June 2023, June 2024, and now — have become a time capsule for my evolving understanding of peace within myself and the world, all captured within the pages of a journal.
I’ve long held an aversion to journalling, usually finding my thoughts far too chaotic and tangled for the medium. My hand desperately tries to keep up with the pace of my thoughts, but they’re already miles ahead. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told, “Journalling is a great way to write your unfiltered thoughts and just get it all out”. Yet, by the time I start writing my first sentence, my mind has scribbled it out and re-written it twenty times.
In the lead-up to our first Kosovo trip, my professor Anne gifted me a beautifully-bound journal – its cover a swirling pattern of gold leaves encircling a tree of life. On the front page, she had written “I used to think these were our stories. Now, I think it is people like you. Write here – you have such a gift”. Of course, I didn’t say “I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than try writing out my thoughts again”. Instead, I promised that the journal would accompany me to Kosovo.
The night before we left, my nerves reached an all-time high. This trip was the finale of my university studies, and I was on the cusp of– Well, that I hadn’t decided. No set plans awaited my return, and organising the trip had barely distracted my anxious mind from filling in the blanks. I had once found peace in the unknown, yet here I was, deathly afraid of it. I spotted the diary peeking out of my luggage and decided to give journalling one more chance. On the first page I wrote, “Only write if you want to, and when you want to. No more. No pressure”. Then, I flicked to the next page and began to write.
I have never, and will never, be a consistent writer. However, for the entirety of that first two-week trip, I wrote every single day. What had initially felt like a slog soon became my biggest comfort. Each day, we’d visit memorials, hear stories from individuals about those lost in the massacres of the Kosovo war, and visit organisations putting their hearts and souls into community reconciliation. In the evenings, my written recaps of the day slowly morphed into deep personal reflections. Long bus rides from city to city became wanderings through nostalgic memories from the past. Reading back through my words, I truly met myself for the first time. I faced my fears and anxieties head on. And saying the words out loud took the wind out of their sails.
On our last day, I wrote, “I realise now that peace won’t just come to me. It’s going to take time, energy and hard work to find it.”
Once we returned from Kosovo, the journal inevitably found itself collecting dust in the back of my closet. Yet, those realisations I had made stuck with me. I settled into a new routine in a small town, picking up the first job available, and slowed everything in my life right down.
By the time the journal next saw the light of day – on the first day of the 2024 trip – my entries has morphed entirely. I’d gone from describing “tangled” , “overwhelming and all-consuming” feelings of dread and an “impossibly heavy weight on my shoulders”, to feeling “calm, relaxed and ridiculously less stressed than when I last sat in this exact seat”.
The contrast was quickly apparent and became even more obvious as I sat through meetings with the same individuals and organisations, yet walked away with completely different takeaways. One meeting in the previous year had inspired a frantic entry: “I need to start focusing up now. There’s a lot of steps I need to take to get me where I want to go, and I need to stop getting distracted.” That same meeting one year later had had a contrary effect: “Everyone has their own path through life, and no single one is the right one. I feel at ease in my decision to stay in Australia for a while longer, and I realise now that the people who know me and love me will understand. I’m so excited to see where life leads me.”
That second year, the journal became my solace. I looked forward to finding a quiet café each day and visiting my mind, as if catching up for a coffee with an old friend. Being surrounded by such intense topics each day forced me to slow down my thoughts and reflect, whenever I had the chance. On the last day, I wrote “My thoughts don’t scare me as much. I notice my anxiety and can remind myself that I am so much more. I tell that little voice, ‘Thank you for protecting me when I was younger. But I don’t need you anymore.’”
Just two weeks ago, as I began preparing the schedule for our 2025 virtual trip to Kosovo, the journal emerged once more. As I revisited its pages, I saw the building blocks that had formed, carrying me to where I am now. Just as I had predicted, it’s taken me copious amounts of time, energy and hard work, and I still struggle to find the right words to describe it. But I’ve discovered what peace means to me, and even if I lose it for a while, I’m confident I know how to find my way back.
Now, after two years, the Kosovo trip once again marks the cusp of a new chapter. In the fall, I’ll be starting a postgraduate program in Sweden – and I’m building up a new project to channel my passion and energy into alongside it. My decisions no longer feel rushed, and my next step took exactly as long as it needed to.
The day before I left for that first trip to Kosovo, I wrote, “People tell me that I put too much pressure on myself. But in the same breath, they tell me that I need to make the most out of my networking opportunities, in order to reach my potential. They don’t see how much weight that adds onto my shoulders. What if I just wanted to pick up a simple job, and choose to chase happiness and stability, rather than a successful career?
Well, Lola. You did just that for a while. You found stability in a simple job and found happiness in the wonderful friendships you made along the way. You adored every second of it. But that time and space gave you the clarity you needed to find your path, in your own time, and most importantly, in your own way. And now, you’re ready to go embark on a new adventure.
