It was Etienne Balibar [Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy. Columbia University (2015)] who called for us to ‘face up to violence’. Yet acknowledging the significance of violence in our human relations remains one of the hardest tasks for humanity. Selecting the violences that matter is more common, and forgetting and suppressing the pain of violence seems the chosen pathway for human survival. This chapter will reflect on my personal, political and academic journey to put violence as a phenomenon at the centre of our understanding of peace [Pearce, Politics Without Violence? Towards a Post Weberian Enlightenment. Palgrave Macmillan (2020)]. It also led to my conclusion that addressing violence could enable much greater human participation to work on the conditions that generate violence. Participatory processes, it is argued, are integral to the journey towards peace. In this chapter, I include personal experiences, particularly but not only in Latin America and intellectual engagement with a range of philosophers, key peace thinkers and practitioners. I have concluded that the interdisciplinary and knowledge exchange conversations needed to revitalise peace thinking and practice are still too limited within academia and practice. As well as rethinking these fields, the chapter calls for an Age of Emotional Enlightenment in the twenty-first century.