The Fire Inside

Image by Devin Avery

It is often difficult to identify your purpose. For some, the direction is crystal clear and the challenge relates to actualization alone; for others, the direction is undefined and the challenge is learning how to sift through distractions and truth aches to recognize the paths they are here to walk. — Jeff Brown

A man who is not on fire is nothing: he is ridiculous, he is two-dimensional.

He must be on fire even if he does make a fool of himself. — C. G. Jung

‘Truth aches.” That is how it feels. I was one of those people who had a definite sense of my direction, but who had a hard time working out the details. My conditioning was like everyone else in my family. We all had something ill fated, something leading the wrong way, to bad outcomes. I obeyed those impulses, but then caught myself once I identified the looming disaster, even if it was fifty years in the future. Once it became obvious, I bailed.

I identified it by a feeling of deadness, a lack of inspiration. You could say a lack of “fire.” My youngest brother watched us all inviting catastrophe and became excessively cautious. He often said that he never made a mistake, which is its own kind of catastrophe, in my opinion.