☮, ♡, ☺, ☯, ✤, and ☆

Alexis writes a lot. She writes notes and letters and journals and she writes and she writes and she writes.

Obviously. it makes me smile. I remember fourth grade clearly. I too spent much of my time writing. I wrote notes and letters and journals and ... yeah. Sometimes history repeats itself.

There's this thing that Alexis does when she writes that further proves that history repeats itself. When she signs a letter, she often does it with symbols instead of words. A little peace sign and a heart are usually her sentiment of choice.

I did it, too. Except, I did it bigger. In fourth grade, I would draw a peace sign, a heart, a four-leaf clover (for luck, of course), a smiley face (happiness!), a star, and a whole long series of symbols. All of the symbols lined up together to convey a sentiment of wanting everyone to be happy and for world peace to be a real thing.

Remember that? Back when we were kids and we thought world peace was an attainable thing?

Alexis still thinks it's an attainable thing. Perhaps that's the gift of age 9, or perhaps it is a realistic and attainable thing and I just don't see it. Mostly I think we're further from whatever "world peace" looks like than we've ever been. I say that with the knowledge that we have made progress -- remember when the Berlin Wall came down? Remember that feeling of borders being knocked down and people becoming united in peace?

We've made progress sure, but then we took about 624513598 steps backwards.

When I was nine, I thought world peace was as simple as having a bunch of people who didn't look alike working together towards a common goal -- happiness. I thought that if a brown person and a white person and a whole bunch of other people just co-existed as they sought their own form of happiness, we'd have it. We'd have world peace.

History repeats itself, so Alexis thinks exactly that right now. For her, world peace is about respect and coexistence and happiness.

I'm not entirely sure she's wrong.