365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

38. Fire-Starters

38. Fire-starters: Write about building a fire.

How do you start a fire?

The first step is to determine if you even need a fire. You do not need to ignite the flames if it is already hot. You need a fire when it's cold; when everyone else is freezing and cannot or will not warm themselves, that is when you need the flames. See, everyone has the ability to build a fire, but few know it and even fewer do it. It's never going to be easy. Fire is wild. One mistake and it's raging: a fiery serpent trampling upon everything good and bad. Let the fire burn out of control and you've burned down the whole forest.

In the same sense, once you have started, you cannot control fire. You cannot be the mastermind behind the swirling flickers seen in its shifting heat. You cannot even predict where the embers popping off of the main body will fall. Maybe you can douse a fire, if it's small, but it takes a great many to destroy a fire that is big.

Fire is not your friend. It's a tool. It's the most dangerous tool to have, because fire is not an extension of you or a product of your mind. Fire is a part of nature that you revive. It accomplishes much: it warms, it strengthens, it cleanses even. At the same time, it does harm. Get too close, contact it in the wrong way, and you sear your skin off.

Fire can be built from embers. Among the ashes may be the stirrings of the last fire: feeble and weak, but there. It's easier to build upon a foundation than to start from scratch. Other times, fire must be built from nothing but hard work, determination, passion, and luck. It never starts by itself. Someone must be the one to decide that it is needed, and that person must then supply the need.

There will always be forces trying to put out your fire. The last question remains: Will you let them?

A/N: This is an allegory. I would love to know what you think it means!