YOU MUST BURN…

A post recently caught my attention and it has been burning in my head ever since. A wake up call or a reminder for myself. Thus I share.

All my life I have been driven by passion. I am a passionate person, for better or worse, I get fired up about things and driven by them.

Song lyrics that have resonated with me have always been about the idea of something on fire, a burning passion to achieve something.

Neil Young’s Hey Hey My My captures it with “.. it’s better to burn out than fade away..”

To me it speaks about doing more than just turning up. It speaks about trying to do something extraordinary. No matter in what it is you do, whether it be your charity, your hobby, your working life, your family, you should have at least one thing that burns for you.

If not, there seems so little point to bother.

And not that it then becomes a reason to do nothing, but rather a reminder to find your passion. Find it and live it. It doesn’t mean you have to have a start up or invent a magic cure for some illness. It means be passionate about what you do.

If it means be the best street sweeper so be it, as Martin Luther King Jr described. “No matter what this job is, you must decide to do it well. Do it so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn can’t do it better…. sweep streets like Raphael painted pictures… “

Too many people are expending so much energy being ordinary. They exist all around us. They turn up, day to day, to their lives bringing mediocrity with them, spreading it to everyone around them. Those that stand out that want to burn face a battle to be accepted, to fit in, the rules don’t necessarily allow it. Whether it is extraordinary bosses, politicians, writers, staff sweeping streets, someone around them is being far too ordinary or normal. Making it harder for them.

But that’s okay.

Because when your passion really gets under your skin and lights your fire, then it burns, and when it burns… well then the earth spins a little differently.

The post is called BE ON FIRE, and the entire post is in CAPS LOCK. And I love it! Yes this is about start-ups and changing the world and it being hard. But it can stand for anything.

Anything.

IF WANT DO SOMETHING, NEED FIRE.

NEED BE ON FIRE.

THAT WHY BURNING MATTER. NOTHING STOP PERSON ON FIRE> NOT SLEEP. NOT SICK. NOT BROKE, NOT BULLET. NOT END OF EARTH.

NOTHING.

Go on read it all. At least you have half a chance of being on FIRE.

Most wont’ have got this far. Maybe because they are already on fire, or mainly because being on fire makes them uncomfortable. Being on FIRE hurts, it isn’t easy to just rock up and let days go by if on FIRE. Most people don’t want to put a dent in the universe.

But there are those who do. Let them be their passion. Let’s look at them in AWE, let’s give them fuel for their fire. Those people for all their faults do things.

Ireckon Steve Jobs was on FIRE.

YOU MUST BURN.

I must BURN. It’s in my plans for next year, which is just around the corner. Around me things will BURN or we will die trying! I have a sneaky suspicion 2012 isn’t going to be a faint hearted year.

Well that’s what ireckon anyway.

What do you reckon?