Flames

Sometimes, just sometimes, you get to the point where you want to burn it all down.
The structures you have built in your life, your family, your friends, safeguards you have painstakingly contrived to protect the construct that is the end result of the very best that you can do.... you just want to stand there, like a man with a lit match, in bushfire season, the lunatic with the hand grenade in the doorway of an arsenal, ready and willing to destroy everything you hold dear.
Simply to watch it burn.

When you feel the weight of opinion pressing in from all sides; disapproving, condemning. When the beliefs and foundations that you tried to instill in your children are being eroded before your eyes, and you feel powerless and incompetent; THAT is when you want to fall to your knees and scream "SURRENDER", AND DROP THE MATCH AND LET THE WHOLE THING BURN TO HELL!!

Or do you.....

Ironically, it is the spark  that extinguishes the flame. It is the glimmer of an ember that cools the fire.

When you see hope and joy in a child's eyes, the spark of enlightenment when they learn something new from your experience, or the ember of new knowledge gleaned from your company, and the time they have spent with you, or the respect you give them after they have taught an old dog.... These make it worth not burning it all down.

You may still want to burn it down, at times, but the hope for the future, and the spark of your existence as it burns in their lives, makes blowing out the match worthwhile.