“Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces—to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it—and makes it burn still higher.”
—Marcus Aurelius
This morning, a walk.
This afternoon, sitting outside in the sunshine.
The snow is melting and running in rivers down the street, down the drains. You can hear it from everywhere.
Today would have been my Mom’s 70th birthday.
She had a long ugly battle with cancer, starting when I was 16, ending a decade later.
The cancer part was ugly, and all the ways we tried to kill or slow or stop the cancer.
Whatever she was walking through, she turned into fuel.
She burned brighter, higher, clearer.
She became more herself, not less.
In the last month, her mind began to slow. She struggled to remember, to verbalize. She let it go with grace and smiled more instead.
A smile like a beacon, a searchlight, a warm place, a welcome, a flame.
Marcus is great. But Charles says it best, I think:
“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”
—Charles Bukowski
May we walk well through our own fires, big and small, remembering that we are the warmth and the heat and the meaning of it. May we recognize and revere the fire in each other. Sometimes it burns bright, sometimes it burns small.
Love is a dangerous thing, but all the best things are.