Life Burns

Life can be boring, but it can also burn---sometimes with color.

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
--- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“When we were young,

And truth was paramount.

We were older then,

And we lived our life without any doubt”

---Seal in “Don’t Cry”

Burning.  Burning happens when we feel alive, when all our senses hum and there exists a feeling of freshness.  Like a river running to the ocean, we flow, lit up by the confidence that comes from having done what we need to do.

I think such feelings come when:

A.   We honestly relate to someone we care about

And

B.    We’ve done something we were scared to do before

Neither situation promises a life free of problems.  No matter one’s belief system, we all die.  Burning is not about having certainty, it’s living with uncertainty. 

When we have an honest conversation with someone, we can feel heard.  We know when we’ve said the things we need to.  One of the most powerful feelings is when we know someone really “gets” us.  Such a feeling doesn’t remove uncertainty, but at least we face it together.

Doing something that’s scary offers no promise for success---it could blow up in our face.  The person we ask out says no, or we could really, really, really, screw up Beethoven at the piano recital.  There’s no guarantee in going for it. 

Yet doing something in spite of fear is a victory of sorts, a place where we can reconnect with our wildness, the place in us that isn’t paralyzed by possibility of failure.  Maybe we lose such wildness as we “grow up.”  This place brings a measure of joy, likely because we know we did something.  Maybe we were trembling, and maybe we didn’t look completely in our element, but we did act. 

There seems to be a warrior-like quality to doing the things we’re afraid to do.  For right or wrong, picking a path means opening ourselves for life to enter.  Such an opening could bring a gamut of experiences: pain, sadness, or loss, and equally their siblings: joy, passion, and love.

Anyone can do it, this week, this day.  Life won’t assuredly flourish from action.  But it will probably burn like a blazing fire.

In that fire might be freedom.