Let’s kick off this post with a song by Jelly Roll.
Source: Jelly Roll YouTube page
Let’s just say that’s one of the saddest songs ever. And let’s give Lainey Wilson a shoutout because her performance is incredible in it. But that’s not what I want to talk about in this post.
In this post, I want to talk about one little lyric buried within the song—the one that called to me the minute I heard it. It was this part right here:
And all of my sorrows, I’d just wash them down
It’s the only peace I’ve ever found
Obviously, within the context of the song, she’s talking about drinking alcohol and smoking weed, and how turning to those things has been the only peace she’s ever known. But that’s not what I want to focus on either.
I want to focus on that phrase: the only peace I’ve ever found. Because at various points in my life, the source of that peace has been very different.
The Jesus Freak
When I was ten years old, my mother decided it was time to start going to church. We lived in a little modular home out in the country, and the church she chose was on the hill behind our house. You could almost throw a rock and hit it.
At ten, I had very little idea what church was. But my mom got into it, which meant I got into it. In fact, I was pretty heavy into it for a while—at least until the preacher was accused of having sex with my first girlfriend and the church split over it. (I was thirteen at the time.)
From about age ten to sixteen or seventeen, I was a pretty hardcore Christian. If you had asked me then where I found my peace, I would’ve quickly and passionately told you that my peace and hope were in Jesus.
Looking back, it was a pretty naive period in my life. I didn’t really understand what I was saying. I was just parroting what I’d heard preachers and other church folks say. Truth be told, I was too young to know what real turmoil was (even though the preacher sleeping with my 15-year-old girlfriend felt like the end of the world at the time).
That pain, and others like it, were enough to drive me away from church and to make me bitter about the whole thing. In my youthful arrogance, I proudly denounced my Christianity and started telling people I was agnostic.
The Reckless Quest for Knowledge
Enter: college-aged me. I was very active on online message boards. I loved posting and debating with anyone who would engage (and I got banned a lot back then).
Most of my beliefs were forged in those debates. And while I’d never admit it at the time, I got my ass handed to me many times over the years.
If you’d asked that version of me where I found peace, I would’ve said it lay in the pursuit of knowledge. Because knowledge is power, a reckless power that can only be acquired by the most hungry soul.
The Pick-Up Artist
That period of arrogance ended when I was 25, right around the time I filed for divorce and got my ass handed to me by my ex-wife. Every last bit of insecurity floated to the surface as I realized I was just a lonely, divorced chump who had no idea how to talk to women.
So, I threw myself into PUA (i.e., “pick-up arts”) culture. This was around 2007, when guys like Mystery and Style were storming the internet with their methods for picking up women. (Ironically, I watched a video just this morning of Neil Strauss on Jimmy Kimmel talking about that world. [Here’s the video, if you’re interested.])
My experience in that world was short-lived. It felt too skeevy for me. But it did lead me to the Book of Pook, an old PUA guy who posted on the SoSuave forums back in the day. He didn’t push manipulative tricks like the others. Instead, he argued that the best way to attract women was to live an awesome life and just be an awesome dude. Real men are unavailable, he’d say. Real men are out climbing mountains and swimming rivers.
If you’d asked me then where I found peace? I would’ve said it was in the pursuit of women and learning how to be a real man.
The Personal Development Guru
It was good ol’ Pook who first inspired me to seek out personal development materials, rather than just stuff about picking up women. I discovered Tony Robbins, Larry Winget, Dale Carnegie. The classics.
Eventually, I stumbled upon Steve Pavlina (back when his advice was more practical and he was less of a wackjob). He had forums on his site, and the old, argumentative me relished debating the best personal development ideas.
It was there I first wrestled with my own demons (I called them “gremlins” back then) and had some of the biggest breakthroughs of my life. I was sorting through childhood issues. That momentum led me to quit my job and go back to school to become a teacher.
If you’d asked me at the time where I found peace, I would’ve told you: in the possibility of who I might become. Because who I am is pure possibility. It was a bit woo-woo, but it spurred such incredible change that I became a new person.
The Teacher Years and Beyond
I won’t bore you with my entire life story, but at this point my life got consumed by teaching. Everything was about getting my foothold in that world. If you’d asked me then where I found peace? I would’ve said: in serving my students.
After that, I lost my way. I wandered aimlessly (as I wrote about in my last post). Leaving behind my teaching career was the first time in my life where, if you’d asked me where I found peace, I wouldn’t have had an answer.
I would’ve said peace is a pipe dream—that there is no peace, no meaning to any of this. That we’re just floating on a rock in space and everything we think, say, or do has no real purpose.
So, What Really Is the Only Peace I’ve Ever Known?
As you can see, at each point in my life, what I thought was peace revolved around who I was. In other words, my definition of peace was selfish. It centered on me and whatever was going on in my life.
But what if I told you the real answer—at least as my 43-year-old self sees it today—is this: peace is a genuine connection to the present moment.
You see, all those things—religion, education, relationships, personal development, even drinking and smoking—have one big thing in common: they’re attempts to master the present moment (or avoid it).
The happiest times in my life were when I was so engaged in the moment that everything else faded away. But it’s more than that. Because it’s not a selfish ideal.
The other half of the coin is the pursuit of genuine connection. It’s that lost connection that makes us unhappy. The unhappiest among us are just the most disconnected.
Everything I listed above? All of it was really just an attempt to connect with people or with something bigger than myself.
So perhaps the greatest peace, the only peace I’ve ever truly known, isn’t tied to faith, or knowledge, or ambition, or even love in the romantic sense. It’s something far more elusive and sacred. It’s the relentless, aching quest for connection. Not just to people, but to the present moment. To ourselves. To something real. Something that silences the noise and reminds us we are not alone. Because in the end, all the chasing, all the coping, all the reinventions—they’ve all been desperate prayers whispered into the dark, hoping someone, something, would whisper back.
And maybe peace isn’t a place you arrive. Maybe it’s those rare, fleeting seconds when you stop running—when you’re fully in it—and someone sees you, really sees you, and you see them right back. That, I think, is the only peace I’ve ever known. And it’s enough to keep searching for. Always.