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| 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.
