When you think of fire, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Flames, heat, destruction? One of man’s greatest moments was when he learned to make fire. Though this happened long ago, it is no less difficult a feat today than it was thousands of years ago if you take away the lighters, and the matches. If you are a movie buff, the movie “Castaway” tells the story of creating fire without the modern conveniences of fire pretty well. We all know the properties of fire, and can remember back to our boy scout days on rubbing two sticks together to create it. Seems simple enough, but can be a real challenge to create when you need it most. If you are a smoker, and your aching for cigarette, and you have no matches or lighter, you quickly understand how hard it is to create fire. Maybe the answer to stopping smoking is to stop selling matches and lighters. Much like having a gun with no ammunition, the cigarette would be useless….but, that’s another email. Anyway, the ability to make fire, as important as it is can be shadowed by the ability to harness fire, and control it like a fireman controls a brush fire. There are three conditions that must exist to create fire. Spark/ignition, fuel, and oxygen. Without any one of the three, fire cannot be created. To harness a brush fire, firemen use all the surrounding conditions to form their strategy for harnessing, and extinguishing a fire. They use water, they use soil/earth, they use the direction of the wind, and they use fire. Using fire to burn up the existing fuel to slow down and eventually extinguish a fire is the most effective way to defeat fire as it results to fire defeating fire. Essentially, fire “commits suicide”. Responsibly using fire to extinguish fire will be the focus of this passage. Putting this into a training format, the strategy for using fire to defeat fire is to say using rage to defeat rage. Rage, like fire, can be a very strong force, can provide and advantage if kept in check. Rage unchecked will result in “committing suicide” as it will eventually defeat itself like fire. To put this into perspective, if you have ever had a younger brother or sister, or even a younger friend that you liked to aggravate, you slap them around because you are bigger, or smarter, and you continue to taunt them, to make their anger turn into rage. You hold them at arms length while they swing and claw at you, but you are just out of reach. The more you laugh at them, the more the rage builds until they ultimately do something really stupid out of desperation or embarrassment. At this point, they eventually hurt themselves or you drop the hammer on them leading to either the end of the exercise, or someone getting hurt. Same thing with swatting that pesky fly that won’t leave you alone. If you swat at it feverishly like an idiot, you will just get tired and eventually embarrass yourself as the fly continues to fly around your head. Or, you can calmly watch the fly and learn his pattern of flight. And in a calm and cool manner, you wait for the right moment, and smack the fly dead. This is the mindset you have to keep in mind during your training. You want to approach every situation with the calm cool head prevailing, and when it is required, you release your harnessed rage, extinguish the fire, and then return to the calm position waiting for the next fire. Keep this strategy in mind always as it is crucial for prevailing in all aspects of your life. Business, personal, financial, etc…

Remember, fire harnessed allows us to cook food, light cigarettes, and stay warm when it is cold outside. Fire that is not harnessed burns down your house. Rage harnessed allows us to seize opportunities as they become available, and react in a swift and unstoppable manner. Think of it like this, a loaded gun is harnessed fire/rage. You have this destructive force at your disposal, and only so many bullets. You can waste all your bullets shooting aimlessly until you run out of bullets, or you can wait and choose your targets wisely. One shot one kill, that’s what is expected. One shot two kills, is what you train for. Rage not harnessed is a wasteful expenditure of energy and ultimately ends in failure.

Asa Dachi