When the World Feels Broken, Where Can We Truly Find Peace?

Image by Artvizual from Pixabay

What Arcane - and My Kids - Taught Me

My kids have been raving about Arcane for a while now and were insistent I join them to watch the whole series over again. For those unfamiliar, it is a Netflix animated series set in the universe of the online battle game League of Legends. Having never been into video games, and animated series usually don’t hold my attention, I didn’t jump at the chance, but I was curious about what had captivated their attention.

Thankfully I didn’t need to know anything about the game to be moved by the show—it’s a story about two sisters separated by war and ideology, and the brilliantly broken characters around them who are trying to change their world. And so it became a bit of a ritual, curling up together in the evenings, letting myself be drawn into a world I didn’t expect to care about.

I was surprised by how much Arcane stayed with me. It’s a mix of clever animation layered with disorientation. There’s intensity, stylistic beauty, fragmentation, and emotional complexity all at once. Honestly, a lot of it felt chaotic and apocalyptic. There was so much violence, so much hopelessness and desperation. I kept wondering: what is it that my kids are resonating with here?

I don’t think they watch shows like Arcane because they like darkness for its own sake. Maybe they don’t flinch from it the way I do - not because they’re numb but - because they’re navigating a world that already feels like that sometimes. Where power feels uneven, the future uncertain, and everything moves faster than their emotions can catch up. There’s something sobering in that realization.

I think for them it’s just real. Raw. Honest. They’re drawn to stories where flawed characters are still fighting for meaning - where even in the midst of breakdown, there’s a thread of something beautiful and defiant: connection, love and purpose.

Maybe it’s not so different from what I’m trying to do. Just… wrapped in a different kind of storytelling.

And it made me wonder… could I live in a world like that? Do I or have I lived in a world like that?

Clearly, we’re experiencing life through very different lenses. There’s no surprise in that - I was almost forty by the time I had my first child; we grew up in very different eras. Mine was one where the shadow of the Second World War was still very present, shaping the stories we were told and the moral frameworks we inherited.

The wars of my youth - the Cold War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Falklands conflict, the Vietnam War - were part of the cultural backdrop, but they felt distant. They were in the newspapers or on the six o’clock news, usually filtered through a political or historical lens.

Yes, there was violence on TV, but it was more tempered, often held back until after 9pm. The war films we saw--Platoon, Bridge on the River Kwai—looked backwards, to wars already mythologised. Or sometimes the wars were projected into the future through sci-fi stories like Star Wars, where conflict became distant and symbolic. There was a sense of remove, of reflection.

Today, the violence my kids witness in media like Arcane is immediate, visually striking, emotionally raw and woven directly into stories about people their own age. It’s not historical or futuristic, but it is steampunk, a fantasy genre that's defined by a focus on the style of the industrial era mashed up against futuristic technology.

The wars shaping their world aren’t always traditional battlefield conflicts. Sure, they include ongoing crises like the war in Ukraine, protracted conflicts in Syria and Yemen, tensions in the South China Sea, and regional unrest across parts of Africa and the Middle East. These conflicts often appear as brief headlines, but their ripple effects - displacement, economic instability, political uncertainty - touch all of us in different ways.

On top of that, the past few years have been marked by a global pandemic that brought unprecedented disruption. COVID-19 lockdowns, mask mandates, and social restrictions. These were experienced by many as isolating and traumatic, especially for young people navigating critical stages of social and emotional development.

At the same time, their lives have become increasingly shaped by screens and social media platforms designed to capture and hold their attention, often through algorithms that amplify anxiety, division, and instant gratification. The relentless digital noise, combined with the loss of in-person connection during lockdowns, has perhaps intensified feelings of isolation and unrest.

All these factors - ongoing wars, political polarisation, pandemic trauma, and the pressures of a hyperconnected, algorithm-driven world - combine to create a cultural landscape that maybe feels fractured and uncertain, even in times labelled “peace”. For kids growing up now, this is the backdrop to their lives, and stories like Arcane may be one way they process those complexities.

Beneath the vivid animation lies something uncomfortably familiar: instability, betrayal, loss of innocence, and a longing for something better. In my own way, I’ve lived through those things too - not with weapons or potions, but in human relationships, in systems that failed to protect, in moments when everything felt like it might break.

What truly moved me were the final scenes. At the outset of the series we meet an idealistic inventor and researcher, Viktor, working alongside his close friend and collaborator, Jayce. Viktor's journey is a tragic one, motivated by the dream of eliminating suffering,

There’s a moment towards the end - one of those rare, quiet pauses amid all the action - when Viktor is on the brink of transcending his own humanity and reflects on what he thought he wanted. As he grapples with the consequences of his pursuit of perfection, he says:

“I thought I could bring an end to the world’s suffering. But when every equation was solved, all that remained was fields of dreamless solitude. There is no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit.”

That line anchored something in me. The idea that without struggle, without the mess of life, there is no meaning, only stillness. Not peace, but stagnation.

I see the world as full of chaos and contradiction. But, much like Viktor, who had to confront the cost of chasing perfection, I’ve come to understand that peace isn’t about fixing the world. It’s about finding steadiness within. My experience of life is so often shaped not by what’s happening around me, but by the state of my inner world.

When I’m grounded, softer and trusting, everything feels spacious. Even the mess has meaning. But when I’m grappling for control, or resisting life, the same reality can feel hostile and overwhelming.

Same world. Different lens.

Another line from Viktor lingers:

“Do you see? The sublime intersection of order and chaos.”

It reflects his realisation that true progress doesn’t come from total control or disorder, but from the dynamic balance between the two. That resonated deeply - especially in a time when life sometimes feels like a raging torrent when I’d prefer a calm lake.

It reminded me of something similar I felt a few years ago when the kids were deep into Rick Riordan’s books, first Percy Jackson, then The Kane Chronicles, with the Egyptian gods.

On the surface, they’re adventure stories. Fast-paced, witty, full of mythical creatures and magical powers. But underneath, they’re always about the same thing: how a young person navigates a world that feels too big, too broken, too demanding and yet, somehow, finds the strength to keep showing up.

I enjoyed those stories as much as the kids did. Not just because they were fun to read aloud, but because they planted seeds: about courage, choice, identity, and inner truth. Just like Arcane, they use mythology and fantasy to ask real questions.

And what struck me, thinking back, is that this tension between chaos and order isn’t new. It’s ancient.

In Egyptian mythology, which Rick Riordan explores in The Kane Chronicles, it’s the foundation of everything. Ma’at is the goddess of harmony, truth, and balance. Her opposite, Isfet, is the force of chaos and destruction. The world itself is always in a delicate dance between the two, just like our own lives.

In The Serpent’s Shadow, the final book in the series, the protagonists descend into the Egyptian underworld to face Apophis—a giant serpent and embodiment of Isfet. They don’t just fight chaos with force; they learn to understand it, to name its shadow, and to restore balance without destroying the fabric of the world.

Maybe that’s what these stories are trying to teach; not just our kids, but us too.

That chaos isn’t something we can eliminate. It’s part of the design. It exists within the world and within us. But so does order. So does balance. And we get to choose, moment by moment, how we respond.

Whether it’s Viktor facing the cost of his own ambition, or Sadie and Carter standing before the embodiment of cosmic disorder, the lesson seems the same:

Peace isn’t the absence of chaos. It’s the presence of something deeper: truth, clarity, groundedness. Ma’at.

And maybe, just maybe, what my kids are drawn to in these stories isn’t so different from what I’m trying to live into myself.

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