Have You Ever Felt Like Scorched Earth?

When we watch news on forest fires, the prevailing reaction is “How awful!” or “What can we do to prevent them?” Videos and pictures of the ravished land continue this sentiment. What was once lush and green is now charcoal black and cindered. What was once filled with tall, thick trees and vegetation of all sorts is cut down to an empty, seemingly barren patch of blackened soil. It’s scorched earth and it looks burnt, detached from anything and everything it once was, a sign that things happen that are beyond man’s control. But is it entirely a bad thing? Have you ever been in a place in your life where you felt like scorched earth (burnt out, your hopes extinguished, the remains of your life in a heap of black ash)? Do you know that fire is cleansing, that it offers more in the way of change and growth than ever could have happened without it? Do you know that being scorched earth is a requirement for moving into the next cycle of life?

When a forest fire happens naturally, it’s Mother Nature’s way of cleansing the forest floor. Because we’ve suppressed natural cycles of fire, the environment has responded by producing more white fir and incense cedar and seedlings and saplings than is needed for environmental balance. There’s too much vegetation and forest to go around. What’s there is fighting for light, air and nutrients and there’s so much overgrowth that a fire, at some point, is inevitable. For years, we’ve seen the number of bark beetles (bugs who kill trees) grow by leaps and bounds in Southern California. Why? Because we’ve suppressed the natural effectiveness of fires and Mother Nature gave her response: bugs who could kill the extra trees and vegetation that didn’t need to be there.

How does that relate to you and me? If you’ve ever been in a place in your life where you feel like your burnt out, where you feel like life just hit you with so much at one time that you can barely stand up, where you feel that who you are, when you look deep inside, is the ashes of who you once were, rest assured, you’ve felt like scorched earth. But that’s not a bad thing.

Feeling like scorched earth means you’re changing, that the things in your life that were unnecessary or harmful, have now been removed from it. When you feel like who you are is nothing like who you need to be, it’s time to look for the cleansing fire of experiences that have come to make you aware of things that need to be let go of. While the fire removes the unnecessary from your life, it doesn’t take the essence of what’s most important to you away. Your cleansing fire could be the loss of a loved one, a divorce, the loss of a job, or any experience that completely challenges who you thought you were or what you thought you needed to have in your life.

But guess what? We hold onto things that we really don’t need and we allow people and things to define us for way too long that don’t even get at the heart of who we are. The fires in our lives come to remind us that we are not our jobs, we are not our marital status, we are not our education, we are not our money, and we are certainly not our egos. Who we are transcends all of that. What we were put on this earth to do goes so far beyond it that the fires come to get us back in the path of living life on purpose.

Next time you have a fire come into your life, don’t resist it. Embrace it. Know that out of the ashes will come something beautiful and radiant: a call back to who you really are so you can do the work on this earth that you were really meant to do.

And remember:

Out of every obstacle comes opportunity; look for the seed of an equivalent advantage in EVERYTHING!