You Need to Burn

Embracing Good Imbalance on the Longest Day

The summer solstice is not a time for balance.

It is not like the equinox, with its neat symmetry of light and dark, its calm rationality and meditative rest, its quiet planning. No. The solstice is the apex, a throne of golden fire and light in your year. The sun stands still—literally “sol stilt” from its Latin root—holding its breath at the top of the sky, taking up room, drawing out its triumphant apogee. These are the longest days of the year, the days when time stretches, when golden light lingers past the bedtime of children, and the edge of dusk frays into a purple froth like the asters now blooming by the stone walls and cellar doors. This is not a time to rest, however.

This is a time to burn.

Our wounded modern world doesn’t like this kind of talk. It prefers moderation when the seasons call for wild abandon. It calls for decadence when the seasons call for contemplation. There is a deeply ingrained disorder in our culture that seems to run counter to wherever we are in the year. The solstice arrives in all the glory of late June and there is a voice somewhere in your life telling you to not be too proud, to not reach too far, to not speak too loudly, to not want too much. We are expected to live lives of caution and caveats, of qualified statements, forever hedging our bets in fear of seeming arrogant, or worse yet, wrong. Maybe its just the pall we can’t shake from the plague-years, maybe its something deeper and older. Whatever the case may be, the modern world, in its haze of ambient noise and ambient anxiety, preaches the gospel of mediocrity: stay comfortable, stay safe, stay small.

Consider however: what would happen if you stopped trying to be small?

What would happen if you leaned all the way into your strength, your gift, your calling, your strange and radiant light, and let it blaze like the midsummer sun?

There is a kind of quiet tyranny in the modern cult of balance, especially when it is misapplied. You are encouraged to become well rounded, to cover your faults. Some seasons are meant to tip the balance however, and this is one of them. The fireflies blink manically in the fields, the bees throng to clover and thyme, the gardens overflow. Everything is just more right now. More green, more heat, more motion, more abundance. It is not tame. It is not modest. It is wild and generous and great.

So why not you?

Why not now?

What would it look like, here at the peak of the sun’s strength, for you to embrace your own off kilter peak? What if you allowed yourself to say yes to the bigness of your dreams? What if you gave yourself permission not just to try, but to win? To step forward without apology, to create something meaningful and enduring, to do so without the awkward cough of false humility?

The truth is there are things only you can do, things only you know.

There are people who need exactly what you have: your voice, your vision, your fire. Playing it safe will not help them. Shrinking yourself will not make the world fairer or kinder. If anything, the world is starved for greatness. Not ego, not the shallow performance of self, but true greatness: the fullness of someone standing in the center of their gift and offering it to a wounded world with both hands outstretched.

This is what the solstice invites.

To stand tall at the peak.

To shine without shame.

To burn bright and not apologize for the heat.

Go out this week into the streets or the fields. Look at the golden light reflecting of the dew-wet places. Watch the bees as they pour themselves into the flowers, unrelenting in their work. Watch the fireflies return, their green reclamation. Listen to the hush between the breeze and the cricket song that has only just arrived, that peculiar stillness that only comes on these longest days. There is a hush there, yes, but not a quietude, not a silence. It is a held breath. A gathering of energy. A pause before the plunge.

The solstice invites you to a choice.

It is not: “Will you be enough?”
It is: “Will you be bold?”

Go all in. Embrace the good imbalance of these long days. Let yourself be too much. Let yourself want what you want. Let your gifts be unbalanced and oversized and wildly alive. Let your days stretch long. Let your joy be loud. Let the honey drip, the fire crackle, the light hang on just a little longer. Let this be the season you stop holding back.

The sun this solstice will not apologize for burning fierce.

Neither should you.

Three Actions to Live a More Grounded Life this Solstice

1. Host a Solstice Feast with a Fire

Invite friends or neighbors for a big meal outdoors around a fire. Long, slow conversation and generous food. Make something from scratch, serve something in season, light candles or lanterns if you don’t have a fire pit. Stay out past dark. Toast something you’ve been afraid to say out loud: a dream, a project, a prayer. Allow this longest day to stretch your sense of what’s possible.