Driving through the beautiful city of Ojai, I saw four people, who appeared to be in their late 50s, standing with two colorful signs. “No More War” and “Please Come Back” were the words painted on the squared posters. The bright colors might have grabbed others’ attention. However, for me, the two fingers held up by the third man from the right captured my mind.

Peace is a distant term for the victims of war. When I tried to finish my reading about the recent American field reports of the Iraq War, I could not.

Attempting to suppress my outrage, I sought to look for a bigger picture of the unfortunate misery. Then, I became increasingly curious about the existence of peace. As I looked through newspapers and other events around the world, turmoil unfortunately appeared much more frequently than peace.

According to the Princeton Dictionary, the word peace means “the state prevailing during the absence of war,” but it also represents mental state freed from anxiety.

During the mortality, people encounter their outer circumstances deviating from their control, causing a tremendous stress. War is one of these situations.

At first, I observed the four people’s behavior as ineffective and time-consuming to not accept the inevitability and to protest in a small and peaceful town like Ojai, until I realized my short-mindedness.

At the moment when the play “Pandora Jar” presented by Ojai Valley School Upper Campus illustrated the significance of hope, I finally grasped the depth of their demonstration.

It was hope that they showed me.