There is this thing. I call it a thing because I don’t know what else to call it.

A notion that you will fucking die for a cause that is completely arbitrary and one that just happens to suit you. A cause is just happens to be fun for you. That you will die for honor that you decide.

I was reminded of this tonight when I was at a going away party for a guy who had been accepted into the hotshot program. I wrote about this in the past and now he’s off to train to parachute into the middle of a forest fire and fight his way out.

There is that thing though. Maybe you could call it a kind of warrior spirit.

The same thing that makes people take photos and to jump out of planes into a sea of flame. It’s a kind of feeling of “this is so fucking cool…this is the only important moment in the universe”. It’s a feeling of _duty_ to the moment and I don’t use the word duty lightly ever.

Military men understand this too. A complete and total devotion to a moment in time regardless of the danger and the personal consequences. That you will do anything to make some action happen.

I have hung off cliffs for photos. The two Dave’s I met tonight have fought fire just because it was there. I would jump into a fire for a photo without a seconds thought if I thought there was an image to be gotten of the two Dave’s fighting fire.

This is a crazy kind of bond.

If tomorrow I got a call and someone said I need you to jump out of a plane into a forest fire with a camera and tape these men doing this thing I’d have already been on the plane wondering why I was getting that phone call. Such a thing would be the greatest honor simply because there isn’t a one of those crazy motherfuckers that I wouldn’t trust with my life and that I wouldn’t to laud in a photo that captured the danger, the drama, and the _joy_ they have doing what they do which if I could would be even more of an honor for me.

That’s what it is…joy. Most people go to their jobs and they do them because they need money. That’s what I’ve been doing. That’s what most everyone I know does. And I think such wasted time causes you to slowly go insane.

People like the Daves do things because the thing they do are a joy do to. They are a kind of religious experience, they honor all of life by endangering their lives in the process of doing what’s most fun to them. They may be crazy and they are in a sense but they’re also saner than I’ve ever been in a way.

Imagine if each moment in our lives held such importance and such joy?

The notion is so beautiful and so comical, you laugh and you cry at the same moment. Such things are the domain of the wise and the enlightened. Such notions are too tough to hold for long, they make you explode.

But tonight I wished Dave farewell and in return I received a hug that only kindred spirits might share. Both of us drunk, both of us happy, and both of us wanting to jump into the fire just because it was there.

Have fun.