It’s a moderate Winter here in Izmir, Turkey – just cold enough to occasionally stoke up the fire in our living room.

Like my father-in-law before me, as well as many others (men for the most part), I gets to be fixated sitting in front of the fireplace, staring at the flames.

They just keep going.

They are the same. But different.

And watching the flames brings me into the present moment. Thoughts slow down.

This is peace.

Is it just a physical effect though? Or mental? Emotional?

Is it physiological?

Is it spiritual? (Probably not.)

Is it that we ourselves are candles?

Yeah, I like facing that reflection of impermanence – that we will burn out one day.

As the once infamous Carlos Castaneda wrote, quoting the great Don Juan Matus:

“To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.”