Have you ever...

• known you wanted to say something -- could feel the words and concepts tickling the edge of your consciousness -- but couldn't exactly say it because the concepts didn't come clear enough to put into your limited words, regardless of how much your lexicon has grown and expanded?

• wished that you had the knowledge to fully express that which lies inside you threatening to take the life of its holder, knowing full well that your wellspring of thoughts could truly change the world if only you could just get it out?

• known what you wanted to say but couldn't say it, for fear that what you would say could cause a brushfire in the room that could consume you and those around you?

• known that said brushfire was a risk you had to take, because it would be better than the fire burning inside you, creating such intense heat and pressure that the valve you call your mouth could no longer be clamped shut because the word-steam threatened to blow it wide open?

Why is it that, when expressed in this way, an inner-conflict of passion and insecurity sounds like something akin to what a two-year-old goes through when their self-will and curiosity develops before their language centers do?

I'm just musing now -- no real topic to ground me. But then, that's what brushfires are like -- they spread randomly, letting the wind blow them this way or that, without a real reason for existence except that someone or something sparked them into being.

I feel sparked. I feel alive and on fire! But unlike the wildfire, I feel in charge of my direction. I know where I'm headed, even if I don't know exactly how I'll get there. That uncertainty accompanying certainty leaves me with a feeling of exhiliration!

Have you ever...

• let the words blow the lid off of your well-groomed exterior, spilling out into your perfectly ordered world, messing up the polished floors and getting on everyone around you that you are sure will not like the inconvenience of your mess on their shoes? Yet when the words settle, and the adrenaline leaves you after the pressure is relieved, you worry what the fallout will be, only to not have any fallout to worry about?

A responsibility I've learned is mine is to not worry about what others will do, say, or think in reaction to my active participation in the world. Because when the dust settles after I've done my thing it becomes apparent that I'm worrying about nothing. Worry is a thief that steals your purpose, steals your confidence, and leaves you in fear of unreality. We all have something to contribute, without which the world would be incomplete. Worry is not only an enemy of the individual, but to the whole.

Yet it's there for a reason. Worry was planted somehow. Bounded discourse? Paternalism? Racism? Communism? Ism, schisms -- worry invades within after being birthed by -isms without. The only way to stop it is to ...

stop. To be a rebel, to take claim of your education, to break all the bounds on your discourse. And not just for the sake of it, but for the good, well-reasoned, responsible contribution to the world that you were born to make.