Don’t add fuel to the fire - A Scoutmaster Minute

How do you put out a fire?

Adding more fuel is not the answer. How do you deal with anger, resentment, misunderstandings, conflicts and arguments?

These are natural reactions that everyone feels some time or another. It’s not wrong to feel angry, frustrated or resentful – it’s how we react to these feelings that matters.

Anger can actually feel a lot like fire. If we react to anger by saying or doing angry things it’s just like adding fuel to the fire. Fire and water are opposites. Bad feelings and right actions are opposites. We can’t douse a fire by adding fuel to it and we can’t resolve bad feelings with bad reactions. If you get burned what do you do?

Nobody treats a burn with more fire. If you grab a burning stick what do you do? You drop that stick pretty fast. If we feel hurt, angry or resentful our first reaction ought to be to ‘drop the stick’ before we get burned even worse. This means we get ourselves away from the situation and cool off. Fire and water kind of cancel each other out. Good actions kind of cancel out bad feelings.

Friendship, kindness and cheerfulness can cancel out anger, hurt and resentment.