inner fire

I had a birthday recently. Birthdays are great if you like celebrations and cake and wishing on candles blown out. They are great for reflection and for reminding. I often need reminding to live intentionally. I tend to slip into allowing my life to live me. A birthday is a good nudge to tend the garden that is my inner being, and to live from that wild and beautiful place.

To mark my 44th trip around the sun, my husband planned for us to go out for dinner with dear friends. This is a couple whose lives most often flow out from their genuine selves. They inspire us every time we’re together – reminding us to live with intention, not from a place of “should,” but from the place our souls catch fire.

At dinner, I was asked what I want from this year. I found it interesting that this question was so difficult. There are lots of things I could want. Success for our business. Health for our daughters who have medical challenges. Awakening to truth and justice for our world. Maybe these are the things I should want. “Shoulds” are a little too easy for me. But “shoulds” never light my soul on fire. They weigh me down and close me in – even when they’re truly good things. But what do I truly want?

I’ve been struggling lately with inner anger. You know, the kind that doesn’t have a subject. I’m not angry at any particular person or event or idea. I think my “anger box” just might be full. As a woman, there is so much pressure to act and feel and think in a certain way – a way that never includes anger, and rarely even includes passion. So, for 44 years I’ve been stuffing that anger down – pushing it into a space inside and pretending it doesn’t exist.

I didn’t realize until recently, when my anger-box began to overflow, that I’ve been bashed over the head with the idea that anger is bad, all my life. It has become a tool to push me down, make me behave, and shut me up. Oh, I’m not saying anyone purposefully taught me that, but I learned it anyway. Truly, women especially, carry the weight of expectations and impossible ideals in a way that men rarely do.

Recently someone suggested, just casually, that maybe this anger is a gift. Strange idea. I’ve been trying to figure out where to dump it – how to get it out – how to get out from under it. I’ve been trying to push myself back into being the woman I should be. This idea of allowing anger to light my inner fire is a revolutionary one for me. Maybe anger is my own personal muse.

So, as I sat at dinner thinking about what I want from the coming year, amid images of paddleboards and motorcycles, came a new word for this anger I’ve been so hastily rejecting: inner fire.

This year, I want to find my own inner fire. I already have a full tank of fuel. Maybe I just need a wick and a spark.

It’s time to prepare for the fire, the life, the magnificent waves of the uncontrollable ocean. This living truth will not be a manicured garden with neat rows and edging. It will spill out and gloriously produce life. Its seeds will fly in the wind and its vines will creep everywhere. But it will be alive. It will be real.

So if you’re suffering, like me, from “should” fatigue – if you’re a walking junior-high-science-project-volcano, ready to spew red food colouring, baking soda, and vinegar – then take a moment to consider what it is you’ve been striving for. Is it something alive or dead? Take a moment to embrace the living things deep inside – even if they feel dangerous.