Helping to Extinguish Each Other’s Fires

Let’s try to free the pent up fears and anxieties and frustrations we hold tightly to ourselves, so they have more room to spread out and shared with our trusted communities. That way, just like extreme wildfires that are thinned out lose their intensity, our own battles can be more bearable. And who knows, perhaps the people in our lives will have new ways of coping with the very challenges we are facing, and we, in return, might be better able to lift others too.

Wildfire has always been a component of Western United States landscapes. And although it’s astonishingly tragic when people lose homes, loved ones, pets, businesses, and landscapes they love so much, we have to admit that fire has an important role to play in replenishing ecosystems. And they can also be amazingly remarkable from a physical, chemical, and natural standpoint.

I was working on describing a phenomenon today with my work where the conditions are so dry and hot and the wind is blowing so hard that extreme fire behavior occurs. Extreme fire behavior is different from regular fire behavior in a couple main respects: extreme fire can produce huge growth in burned acreage, create incredible fire vortexes which are basically like tornadoes of flame, and sometimes large severe fires can create their own weather systems, which can create even more severe wind conditions.

As I was drafting educational materials to help folks understand why fire crews might adjust their tactics when they see those kinds of extreme fire conditions, I couldn’t help from thinking about how similarly we approach our life challenges sometimes. Rather than being open with our real situation at work or at church or at social events, we start building up our own weather system to accommodate all of the pent up anxiety, fear, anger, and frustration.

We assume that setting up these separate mechanisms is a good thing because this way we can continue to appear completely put together and on top of all of the many demands while still committing to our relationships. But there are at least two obvious flaws with this way of thinking. 1. Compartmentalizing our stresses have a way of honing them so that they become more intense just like how the weather systems inside major wildfires feed on its own weather to produce even more destructive fire effects. And 2. It assumes that our relationships are separate from our challenges when in reality, relationships are about putting it all on the table so others can get to know us as we really are.

And that’s a scary prospect. We definitely don’t like showing our stormy and fiery sides of ourselves. And there are healthy boundaries that we can set for ourselves so we don’t self-disclose it all or before the relationship is ready for it. But those perfectly posed social media posted pictures take a long time to setup because they’re not natural for most of us.

Let’s try to free the pent up fears and anxieties and frustrations we hold tightly to ourselves, so they have more room just like wildfires that are thinning out lose their intensity. And who knows, perhaps the people in our lives will have new ways of coping with the very challenges we are facing, and we, in return, might be better able to lift others too.