Burn Embers

"I just don't want to do anything but I am compelled to perform productivity. When a fire burns out, it's no longer a fire, it becomes ground. Every inch of this earth was once a flame. Scorched earth needs time to bring forth its bounty.”

The ink fell from the pen onto the page as the statement appeared. Outside, grey clouds filled the morning sky. I sat within a sense of purposelessness as I cradled my journal. It had become a daily tome of who I am before the day pushes me to be someone else. Every morning two pages of ink spill from me before my eyes focus. Striving to uncover the man buried by a machine. A system that I believed served people but only to realise it performs for them.

I now sit, nothing to perform for. The blank lined page of the journal asking nothing of me. I acknowledge how these pages were once born of fire. In this moment they fuel me, back into an understanding of the fundamental self. Like burning embers the pages light up with my stillness, breath and stroke of the pen.

In these movements my metaphorical mind reaches back to past lessons. A time when walking on hot embers is not only possible, it is vital. Vital to show me who I am, but not alone, with others who can see the fear, breathe and move anyway. A new understanding of capacity was born for many that day. In preparation, breath, and intention we walk the fire. Others beckon us with cheer and comradeship. Courage is not born in solitude; it rises to the surface when action meets human connection.

And now, I hold one burning ember in my hand, my journal. Like a Bushman of old who carried a tinderbox of hot embers to move fire with them. The ground cools for me. The fire extinguished, but in all its past rage, lessons need to travel with me. To a place of fertile warm connection. Where agency rises from the courage in knowing the performance is over.