An Exposition on the Nature of Fire

What is fire?

          Beyond the chemistry or scientific explanations. Is it a phenomenon? A thing? Animated object with delusions of grandeur... or is it something more?

          A being? A living, breathing, eating, thinking thing. It breathes like us, feeding off of oxygen, dying if deprived of it. It seeks out food that can nourish and sustain it, moving to "greener pastures" once it can no longer satisfy its hunger. Fire has been tamed, beaten and forged into mankind’s best friend, greatest weapon and worst foe. With a spark, flames ignite to cook our meals, heat our homes and light the darkest corners of the world. With the same spark, flames ravage entire nations, cowing the proud and laying low the mighty. With that same spark, the very world as we know it can be reduced to ashes. How great has man become that we control the mighty beast of fire. We welcome its coming and fear its touch. Our houses contain enough energy to flash burn entire forests, but we turn it on and off at will. On. Off. On. Off. How long, like any beast, until fire bites the hand that feeds it? The world stands at the edge of a fire filled precipice and all we can do . . . is hope for rain.

Further exposition on the nature of fire

          Some would argue that fire is mindless, a thing that exists without thought or pretence. Let us take a simple wood fire for example. A fire cannot be born from the great and solid trunks of oak and maple. It must be nurtured to life through friction, building energy that drives engines and heats homes. Slow, grinding friction starts the heat to rising, building in intensity, passing the point of ignition and bursting into hot, new life of its own. The small coal left behind must be nurtured and fed, protected from the elements and housed from the world. So do all things need protection when they are young and in their beginnings. Small bits of twine, brittle dry-grass and grounds of sawdust. These are the foods of the new ember of fire.

          With food and time, our fire grows, able to consume larger and larger amounts of sustenance. The fire now burns up quickly what first gave it life and energy when new. It eats now what it needs to survive, no more, no less. A fire seeks out appropriate fodder. It leaves behind that which it cannot serve its needs, burning the transient and leaving the permanent, though not unmarred. A fire cannot but choose its path; only following what is set in front of it.

          But do we, as humans, not follow what is in front of us? Turning aside and expanding our horizons to grow? In some cases, are we not just as destructive as forest fires? Rampaging through fife with no thought to burning ourselves out at the end? Exposition on the human parallel with the life of a fire is a fine line to draw.

Who is to say that each person is not a fire? Or at least contains a spark, burning with the desire to live, grow love and laugh . . . never to die.

          But we seldom think so far ahead. The fire does on its own level. By expanding, it starts new fires, leaving coals and its mark on whatever it touches. Stone and structures bear the marks of a fire forever. The firestorm that scorched the earth is testament to the attempt by fire at a kind of immortality.

          Some of us leave this life having left nothing to remember. Others burn bright and hot, marking the past for all time. How are we remembered when even memory forgets us? Immortality seen through a fiery eye is the only way there.

          How will you mark the world?