1. Start with a healthy, nutritious breakfast.

2. Recognize that there are many people in the world who do not have access to healthy, nutritious breakfasts. You are hogging the planet's resources, thus contributing to the suffering of countless others. Others have died, yet you are still alive. Stare blankly as feelings of inadequacy and guilt paralyze you.

3. Displace your guilt by becoming involved with a group that does good things. This could be a faith-based group or a political organization -- any group dedicated to making the world a better place. Throw yourself into the cause. Make a total emotional investment.

4. Become truly sad. If this is difficult, it will become easier once you see that despite your heartfelt good works, people still suffer. You can offer a partial and temporary palliative, and this is often a very good thing. But people suffer in a deep place that you cannot reach. In fact, the depth of your own suffering astounds you. Grieve fully. Cry buckets of tears. Flood your eyes with a kind of sorrow that's bigger than your conception of who and what you are.

5. Look around. Everything looks different now. There are no more strategies, no more bargains to strike with heaven, no more assumptions, no more resentments, no more inadequacy or guilt. You see that we're all in freefall and it's nice to have a hand to hold.

6. Start with a healthy, nutritious breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day -- frivolous yet grave; tangible yet fleeting. It may be your first meal or your last, a gift to be received with gratitude and grace.

This is how world peace begins: not with a bang but a bowl of cereal.

We have to start somewhere. Here's to humble beginnings.