It Only Takes One Match to Start a Fire

Some people can only learn by touching and these folks need to put their hand on the lit stove to determine that it is hot.  Sometimes you will have to get burned to see the truth.  Hopefully these people who are touching the hot stove will learn their lesson on the first try and they will not go on repeating this behavior as some type of self-harm and intentionally injuring themselves.  Some like it hot, however everyone is different, but in my opinion hot should never become too hot.  A deadly heat wave is ravaging the U.S. at the moment with above-normal temperatures forecast and scientists are blaming the recent scorching temperatures on human-induced global warming.  It is not so bad here in Florida, as it was hotter in Vermont yesterday than it was here.  The Muslims that went on a pilgrimage to Mecca this year to celebrate the Hajj, one of the world’s largest religious gatherings have been having a difficult time with the heat.  Nearly 500 confirmed fatalities have been reported from the Hajj heatwave and hundreds more are feared dead.  Saudi Arabia is in a desert and that is no place that you want to be when the temperatures get hot.  The official death toll from this year’s Hajj may soar to around 1,000 as reports emerged that as many as 600 Egyptian worshipers perished on the route to Mecca amid extreme heat.

I like pizza when it is served hot, but I let it cool off before I put it in my mouth because I have had the roof of my mouth burned before because of this.  On a hot day I enjoy having some ice cream, but I know that frozen treats and some icy drinks can produce brain freeze, so they have to be savored and not devoured.  The most desirable distance is called the Goldilocks zone, where things are not too hot, nor too cold and this is where life is able to flourish.  Two of the Three Bears were extremists and Goldilocks was a freeloading intruder.  Squatters supposedly have rights because sometimes people buy land and don’t use it, but Goldilocks should have been able to tell that someone was living in this place, so she had no right to taste the porridge, even if she was hungry.  Some things should be obvious, but there are a lot of idiots out there.  Life is full of hard truths that we don’t want to hear and difficult to acknowledge.  We need to confront these truths so we can fix our flaws, as we all have shortcomings or areas that need improvement.  We must remove our rose-colored glasses because they are holding us back from becoming better people.  It is not true that domesticated turkeys are so lacking in intelligence that they will look up at falling rain until they drown.

Written for Sunday Confessionals where Oloriel asked us to consider this phrase, “putting one’s hand on the lit stove to check if it is hot”, from the prism of personal experience.