I met a young barista from Khayelitsha whose goal is to one day own his own café. He claims to be passionate about coffee; he claims to treat each customer’s order as the first of his day. He knows it’s challenging. My cynic inside tells me, with bitterness, he will grow out of this practice, that the shift work will wear him down and that some lack of financial opportunity, viability, the odds stacked against him will rob him of his dream.

My hopeful self believes he will reap the rewards of work with such integrity and that his hard-working joy may propel him into success.

What is it about youth that makes risk worth taking?

Heart risk is tantalizing. Heart risk summons saliva to my tongue, between my back teeth and it clenches my jaws and fists. Tantalizing Risk has chosen a hurt heart, chosen a place in a person; heart risk has shown me a fire uncontainable, shown me the destruction of spark with no chimney and smoked me out of my own body. I have transmuted passions from one arsonist lover to the next. I am sorry about that, by the way.

With a match comes a certain responsibility to its striker. Responsibility, the thing about growing I hate the most, floats me above my present moment, leaves me levitating out my limbs, wondering what emails impatiently await my return to the homestead.

The responsibility of you, fire-keeper, may simply be to try and try and try again, to share what you know, too, about where sparks turn to flames and the line between risk and reward. The discernment you learn, as woods burns to coals, fire-keeper, is just how to tend and contain and harness and direct and focus your youthful passion.

Know when to stoke and when to spread. Know where to build and in what shape. Know how to cook for yourself, nourish the vessel you’re in.

So long as energy cannot be created or destroyed, fire leaves in its path coals and ash, fertile and transformative magic. What can come along with you? What must stay behind?

I posed a maybe question on a recent maybe date and it went something like, “do you think it’s possible that anyone who tells you they have no regrets in life is someone who has not risked enough?” and the person on the other side, the receiver, the listener paused, Thank Goodness, and responded something like, “I think it’s quite the opposite, actually…”

“I think the person who tells you they have no regrets is the person who has taken the risks.

because so often, the regrets people have are about the things they didn’t do.”

the risks they didn’t take

I went for a big long hike at the start of 2024 and the day I hit the highest peak on my map, I inevitably came down the other side of a steep uphill climb and when I did, I came across a group of friends, splashing around in cold, clear water and in short conversation I learned that they had summited at sunrise. They had started in, at that time of summer down south, the pitch black early morning hours, the descending side of midnight’s mountain, their journey’s duration close to six hours.

How were they enjoying themselves without sleep? What kind of playful and relaxed energy could be born from exhaustion? How did they all become such great friends after such a short time of knowing one another?

Once, a coach told me, “swing when you think you should shoot. and

shoot when you think you should swing.”

trust you’ll find another opportunity, you are not so young as you look

and now, I am reminded of another coach whose criticism of my game went something like, “we just want to see more fire from you.”

and another coach, one who had trained me from a much younger age, made me cry a handful of times and the lesson within each tearful hour went something like, “we have to find the fire in you – we have to find the switch so that you can turn it on when you need to.”

My now now translation: “what idea of yours feels like the courage to try?” or “what dream scares you out of your seat?” In practice: “as your years augment, you trade spark for flames which show signs of potential. Each fire burns anew and your adult responsibility is a question of cost analysis, constant pivoting, and blind faith, maybe”.

and I think maybe it’s the spiral path – a honing or a sharpening of the blade that strikes the wood that ignites the spark that turns to flame and blazes, with enough focused oxygen, into sustained fire; a narrowing or an expanding, which I am not so sure as I am that there are no perfect circles in nature.

Doesn’t someone say that’s the definition of insanity? trying and trying the same thing and expecting different results? For this reason and others, share what you know and receive with open palms the criticisms of those who have made more fires than you have, yes. And know, too, their risks lie behind them and yours ahead of you. The precise and specific power of shared knowledge lies in your passions entangling with their wisdom, alchemizing necessary discernment, a grounding and progressive force for you between your risky, bounding leaps.

Perhaps you just need a new forest, one whose wood burns at your pace until it no longer does. And it’s this part, the part after the until, that only comes with intentional practice, action with its mirror of reflection; masculine with its harmonizing feminine; sun with its balancing moon.

Start in the dark, when you can’t see the trail and

buy a headlamp or

bring a friend

to the fire

when has the sun ever not risen?

Until You Know Better

start a job and then leave the job

give your elements a sound; name them like coals and shards shimmering against glass

cat/cow to malasana in the morning

Great Artists Steal

Obsession, the movie

“…Return to the fire.” – again and again, Londolozi’s centennial website, “The Alchemy of Safari”

“There are no straight lines in nature,” – my Old Man