You have plenty of fuel. What is your match?

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I haven’t seen my regular hairstylist in a year. This week, we had a lot to catch up on. She could immediately see something was different about me, reflected through my eyes, skin and the way I held my shoulders sitting in her beauty chair – a bit more relaxed and set back than before.

I admitted that I’m in the middle of Transformation, with a capital T. In a nutshell, Transformation was inevitable as I ripped apart decades-old patterns, improved the quality of my thoughts, re-ordered my priorities and set new boundaries. I’ve been saying goodbye to prior versions of me, thanking them for their lessons, then bringing only the best pieces forward.

She got right to the point with this one question: “Kathy, you had plenty of fuel. We all do. But what was your match? What was the spark that launched you into action?”

I was speechless, with no answer to this perfect question. She was right. I’ve been walking around drenched in fuel as electric currents bent my way, begging for permission to be used in my metamorphosis.

What was my match, you are wondering? Anger. Locked away anger that wasn’t allowed to be seen. So, I decided let it be seen and let it be felt. I decided to let it out of my body and let the match of anger ignite my fuel. The anger burned away the stories on replay in my mind. The anger presented itself in the form of rancid heat of regret about precious years racing by with far too little lived. I used that fire to put a stake in the ground that I will not weave the same stitch over and over if it’s less than exquisite.

Now, the fire has burned my field and left only tall trunks of my choosing. This barren, burnt field is a clean slate for the oasis of this new chapter. It is the perfect fertile ground for rebirth. Like the forest floor – sleepy seeds are choosing to awaken and turn into the wildest of flowers.

Now that the match did its job, what is the rain that washes away the soot and provides life to these dormant seeds? I’ll leave us with this poem, by Mary Oliver:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver