Fire

I need to find fire.

No, not the fire as we typically know it, the sort that we warm our toes by or roast marshmallows by or young boys are incredibly drawn to try and make.  I am referring to the fire within the soul, the fire that drives us on.

I have found that I am lacking in the fire lately - and it shows.  It shows in the activities I do and how I do them - not that I am powerfully driven to do them, but rather that I just go through the motions.  This works itself out in the fact that my performance tends to level off and I am somewhat slow and sedate (or lazy, depending on what you want to call it) in execution.

Is it the competitive spirit?  Maybe - although I have never been a huge competitor.  I trace this mostly to the fact that I have never really been so good at a thing to be in a competitive mode. I am always "second best" - not bad in a world that needs second violins as much as first violins mind you, but hardly the sort of thing that will drive someone on to do better.

Perhaps it is finding that goal, to be driven on to achieve that goal.  But what does that goal look like?  Most of the things I do hardly result in the sort of thing that a man can handle or hold in his hands or put up on his wall.  They are the invisible markers of the soul that exist only in the mind.  But even if invisible, there is still that fire that needs to be there.

And is it finding or stoking?  Perhaps I am looking at the wrong factor.  The fire may certainly be there but what I am doing to make it hotter, brighter, more engulfing?  Is it that I cannot build up enthusiasm, or that I fear building up enthusiasm because I fear that I will inevitably fail and reveal my failure to others?

I need to know.  As Brian Tracy says, there's only one way to coast - and balloons will only rise with the hot air of fire, not the cooler air of settling expectations.