Week 14: The Fire Of Aliveness

There is the fire of life and the fire of the world. The fire of the world can burn us up. This is the fire of circumstance. We need to know which fire to feed and which to douse. ~Mark Nepo

We are linked in our humanity the way the earth holds a tree, so that tree can hold a nest, so that nest can hold a bird, so that bird can drop a seed that will in time give birth to the next tree.

• Week 14: The Fire Of Aliveness
• The Book of the soul - 52 paths to living what matters by Mark Nepo

The Fire Of Aliveness

It’s a funny thing, figuring out what we are meant to do and what the world is asking of us. The tangle of wants and needs and how we stretch ourselves to obtain so much, only to slowly reduce that accumulation as we age. It is the push and pull of getting what is essential and letting go of what is not while we forage to discover who we are. 

Throughout this discovery we stumble with the tragedies that unravel the significance of our days. Awakening to the smallness of “things,” and the wish of one more day with someone we love. These deliberations tumble me back to the haze of life after losing Ryan. In my grief, I struggled to recognize what remained, like sifting through the debris from a fire, in a world I no longer recognized.  

Slowly, we work our way back to a new way of life, now with that fire of aliveness, knowing how fleeting it all is.