“Philosophy is the longing for a homeland in which we were never born.”
I was not born and bred in Belgrade, though as someone coming from Montenegro, this has almost never prevented me from feeling at home here. And of course, I was not born and bred at the Centre for Nonviolent Action (CNA). Neither are the homeland in which I was born. However, I will go so far as to say that much of what I think of myself as being today was born or at least its seeds were sown in CNA and the work it does. Values, world-views, attitudes, hopes, but also fears, dilemmas, perspectives, they all come and return through the prism of peacebuilding, coming out of and going back into, spreading out from and focusing in on CNA. Just like my life’s journey so far.
And the journey connected to CNA started with the basic training in nonviolent conflict resolution at Mount Jahorina in 2002. It continued through the training for trainers that same year and the next, a number of joint actions that took place in the meantime, up until I had my first working engagement in 2007. But already six months later, I left the Centre for what still seems to me today a strong enough reason, for love, which I then believed could not have a future in Belgrade. The time I had spent working at CNA was too short to allow me to parse through my impressions and write about that first arrival, but long and intensive enough to be sobering and to encourage me and help me focus.
My return had, therefore, been left hanging in the air practically since I left; for me, it had always been around my neck or over my head, and for many from the CNA team it must have remained an option for much of that time. At least I’d like to think so. It is a rare privilege and an unearned chance for which I will remain forever grateful to the people of CNA.
The Need for Change
A feeling of awkwardness, melancholy, longing, discontent never left me after my first not-so-glorious departure from CNA. A departure that was never truly that, because severing ties with CNA is simply impossible. How can you sever something that has merged with you and become part of you?
What I know and what I knew the whole time was that I had tremendous support, a team of people who were always there for me and a feeling of absolute trust in them, something that was hard to come by for me in the past decade or more of my life. Thank you for that. For believing in me and giving me the opportunity to be once again and continue being what I think I am.
I am also indebted to and grateful for my own need to change something, myself, my world, the world… To work on making the society we live in one of justice and freedom, respect and solidarity. Based on all those values underpinned by peace. That is why my arrival/return to CNA, after ten years spent wandering, abroad, absent or dormant, feels like coming home, back to my homeland, the place where I belong, a return to myself.
“Philosophy is the preoccupation of a man who does not consider himself fully situated and who therefore tries to account for that insecurity.”
I find my motivation and incentive for arriving/returning to CNA in my determination to account for all the missed opportunities, irresponsibilities, failures to respond, conformities and comforts. To account for my own indifference that would assail and often overcome me. My indifference to violence, to discrimination, to daily scams, large and small, humiliations, refusals to let others remain in their otherness. An indifference to the degradation of human dignity. To account also for my lack of confidence, my insecurity at having my position challenged in peacebuilding processes.
But insecurity is not a fault, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Just like conflict, it presents a chance, an opportunity for change, for progress, for escaping the vicious circles of hatred, nationalism, the spirals of violence and their incessant retrograde pulls. Accounting for that insecurity is thus an opportunity to change both yourself and the world. For hope. One of my reasons for returning is also my deep-held belief that it is “impossible” to do anything that is not, however tenuously, related to the long-standing aim of CNA to build lasting peace in this region. Peace as the foundation and precondition, peace as the aim and final instance by which we measure everything else, a right and a need, a duty.
It is not just the need and opportunity to work on peacebuilding, but also to finally, fully and freely, and with a sense of empowerment, live for what you do, constantly advancing, developing and transforming both yourself and hopefully others around you, that is the true privilege and, of course, a great responsibility. Living in accordance with how you think and what you do, with what you also love, is difficult, demanding, but also liberating. Your eyes are clear, your backbone straightened. If freedom is not accompanied by accountability, then it is merely domineering, a selfish and immature, and ultimately irresponsible way of life. I would like to think that by coming to CNA, I have put a definite end to that “freedom” without accountability.
“In a land of hatred, those unable to hate are the most hated.”
Of course, neither me nor CNA are the same. Years, circumstances, situations, everything has changed. We have grown, developed, expanded our fields of action, multiplied our activities, reach and influence. But the problems and obstacles have not stagnated, either, it seems they too have grown and multiplied over the years. Uncertainty and apprehension over coming back, fitting in, being useful, having a purpose are thus also enlarged, and fears abound.
My first arrival was a dislocation, an inversion, being thrown out of joint. My beliefs and worldviews, my attitudes, prejudices and judgements were all put out of joint and dislocated. I was changed, both changed and empowered in what had up to that point been only a hunch, a thread of hope and trepidation.
For my second arrival, I would like that feeling, that world-changing energy to multiply, branch out and blossom. For that feeling of change for the better – a feeling of confidence that despite enormous obstacles and difficulties, things are moving forward – to never leave me. Instead, for it to give me the strength to persevere and spread that energy. My return to CNA also comes from this need to see what I can and should do with this disjointedness, with the world turned upside-down.
Infected with Nonviolence
The difference compared to my life in Montenegro is also that in CNA, you can work on liberating yourself from hatred without compromise, without sentimentality, without conformity of any kind, freely and without ulterior motives, just like the only way you can love – unconditionally.
In the society(/ies) we live in today, peacebuilding is considered lunacy, a futile mission, and those advocating and fighting for peace are labelled unhinged, certifiable. Infected with nonviolence as I am, with nonviolent struggle, infected with peace, I can only say that it is a supreme privilege to harbour this so-called insanity. All the more so because of the belief that the disease is communicable, infectious, there is nothing else to do in this world, which I hope is already tired of hatred, than to continue infecting it.