Yesterday I had the pleasure to attend a party of friendly people in the private home of Lisa and Jim here in Brunswick.

This was the second appointment of an event called Salon, a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, which was launched a month earlier by my friend Lulu.

The topic of the Salon#2 was A-HA moments: Each guest was invited to give a brief retelling of significant moments of their lives that generated insights and understanding.

I wrote this piece following the story. that I told in person in front of the friendly audience. Storytelling and writing are two different beasts, but they have in common a story.

This is the story:

This is my A-HA story. At least a recent one. I have many A-HA moments, which maybe disqualifies the moment itself, as A-HA moments should be particularly special and rare and if you have too many of them they may not so A-HAy… Anyway… This is how it happened…

I had the privilege to spend some days in the beautiful home of Robin and John not far from here, as they were out of town and they asked me if I wanted to stay in their house. I gladly accepted the invitation and find myself to be a resident of So-Glo again, rode my bike around and felt very cool.

As I live full time on a small boat it was great being all of the sudden in such a wide space with a beautiful yard, trees and everything. I enjoyed to take a full standing shower, and small pleasure like put food in a refrigerator.

One of the things that I miss the most is making fires, and Robin and John have a very nice fire pit. So I asked them if it was ok to make a fire because I wanted to burn some old journals that were taking space on my boat and were all full of useless notes.

It felt bad to just dump them in the trash. Not that I was concerned that people can be after my precious information. For that they could just hack my computer. Engulfing the old journals in flames sounded had more purifying feeling.

So I started the fire, not without some trouble to be honest, as it was very humid all around. However the ceremony could not wait for better weather. Eventually I made a very nice fire that took care of my journals with no effort.

I enjoyed to be by the fire with a cup of tea and listen to the wind in the trees. In fact there was some weather coming in but I was adamant to use as much fire time as possible. It eventually started to rain a little so I got closer to the embers and the fire.

All of the sudden I was too close and I was sweating so I adjusted my position a little back. The light rain continued and I was not ready yet to go inside, as I was enjoying being out in the elements. The fire was giving me warmth and protecting me. As long as I kept reasonably close to the fire I could stand the cooling air and getting wet.

Fire is an old friend of us human beings, it’s rooted in our true nature.

It was then that I realized that I had control over the fire, and I could make it as hot or as cold as I wanted playing with the embers and organizing the surface with the long metal pipe that John keeps by the fire.

It was easy. Red – hot. Black-cold.

I was very proud of myself. I was succeeding in burning all the wood already in the fire pit simply by playing with the fire. That made me think about relationships, and how we can choose how close and how far to be in a relationship. We can choose our own comfort place.

If it’s too cold we can poke the logs and make sparks happen. If it’s too hot we simply let it rest. We can and make it red, or to let it go black. I had an A-Ha moment!

Until of course it started to rain heavily. My sense of control got screwed, and I declared defeat and moved back into the house. A quarter of a log was lying unburnt in the fire pit

So I got a second a-Ha moment. In a relationship we are in control until we are not in control.