Peace is often invoked as something external to us: the end of wars, the silence of weapons, the return to coexistence. History shows how readily humanity, when faced with conflict, resorts to violence, as if a primitive impulse still suggests that force is the quickest response to what we cannot manage.
Today, this impulse manifests not only on the battlefield, but also in the constant drive to produce weapons. The arms industry and the technological research that sustains it are not merely instruments of defense or deterrence; they become mechanisms of power and destruction. In this way, war is no longer simply a contained event, but a system that tends to sustain and reproduce itself.
And yet, a peace built solely on external conditions remains fragile. It can be negotiated, imposed, celebrated and fracture at the first sign of collective frustration. Peace cannot be reduced to the mere absence of war; it requires an inner disposition, the ability to inhabit conflict without immediately turning it into domination or annihilation.
The Japanese Zen master Eihei Dōgen wrote: “A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.” In these words, one can glimpse an essential teaching: to accept impermanence and to relinquish the illusion of total control.
This attitude also concerns our relationship with nature, so often exploited and wounded. Authentic peace cannot exist unless we learn to live in balance with the environment that sustains us. The Dolomites are not merely an extraordinary landscape, but a quiet reminder of restraint, care, and responsibility.
Inner peace is not an escape from the world, but the condition that allows us to inhabit it without turning every difference into a threat.
May this peaceful Maratona be an opportunity to look into each other’s eyes and remember that the world can be more beautiful. May peace be with us and within us, today and every day of the year.
Wishing everyone a good, serene, quiet, and majestic Maratona, like the Dolomites that surround us.
michil costa
