It is fun to play with fire until you get burned
Like a gas station wiener that got stuck unturned
The abuse I suffered was hardly earned
From lashes to ashes until I was urned
It’s easy to desire until you get spurned
To love and to lose are hard lessons learned
A teaching that can lead to a constitution stern
Turned from an innocence to which one may never return
—
Emotions can burn with a fire that consumes, sometimes completely. It is easier to destroy than to create, to burn than rebuild. I’ve learned from experience how easily a relationship carefully built over the years can disappear before my eyes in minutes, like a forest of old-growth pines razed by wildfire. It is a painful lesson and a valuable one.
Lessons like these are what have instilled in me a passion for the practice of mindfulness. For many, mindfulness empowers the practitioner with the ability to Respond instead of React. A reaction, especially when emotions are high and arguments heated, can be devastating, like a Molotov cocktail thrown onto parched pine needles in the summer sun. However, a carefully crafted response can be like a powerful wind moving the forest in smooth yet powerful waves, effective but not destructive.
Would you rather be the wind or the flame? Regarding my relationships and the people I love, I strive to respond like the wind. I do my best to put out the sparks of fiery rage before they spread and destroy the habitat we have nurtured and co-created.