“Which do you prefer: fire, water, earth or air?” She asked me.
I squinted my eyes, furrowed my brow, cocked my head, paused, then asked, “Do you mean literally?”
But as I sat with her question and listened to the person next to me answering, it dawned on me how much it meant. At the moment, I craved a visit to the mountains, the scent of the pine, the feeling on my skin of the clear mountain air.
I recalled the visit to San Francisco, when I stood before the Pacific Ocean and breathed in that salt sea air, the wind whipping my face and hair, which made it feel even more joyful to breathe.
Even indoors, inside a beautiful space, a unique and full-bodied aesthetic, before a masterpiece in an art museum, I take a moment and inhale, as if something about the beauty of it comes inside me and stays.
I had no idea.
Then I recall reading that Madonna does not like air conditioning. I wait for the time of year when the windows can sit open, allowing the breeze to blow life into a stagnant space. My husband amusedly agrees to keep the vent always on in the car, no matter the outside temperature. I must have circulation. I must have air.
Another person answered earth: the feel of gardening, camping in the woods, an orientation to the soil. I think of my daughter, curled up like a cat before the fire, book in hand. We are all drawn to the fireplace or campfire once it’s lit. My cousin tells me how her daughter is a fish or mermaid, spending hours and hours in the water, whenever she can.
But what is the point of this question, I asked myself.
These are the things we can use to feed our souls, fill our cup, keep our brains operating when times get tough.
I thought of this this morning, alternating between head in hands and clicking on my Google Calendar as I tell my husband all the times I double-booked myself this month, and questions we still have about the schedule. It’s the second week of having all our children in school. One to one school, two to another, two to homeschool, and the two-year-old learning from life (six kids, if you’re counting). There is an Excel sheet mounted on the fridge and on my “teacher table,” and distributed to every member of the family. Some items are still missing from it.
But this is life, isn’t it? We have our to-do lists and the things we are responsible for. A few hiccups, disruptions and delays crop up, and the structure feels it might wobble and topple.
One of our students was overwhelmed one morning; the whirl of getting out the door on time had taken its toll. I talked as we drove to school, comparing this new stage of life to all of a sudden walking ten miles a day. “It’s really hard, but it gets easier as you get used to it. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, if it feels like too much to handle, you can tell yourself that. It won’t always be this hard.”
There are some hard things that are worth doing, and the only way to get past them is by going through them. So, what do we do in the meantime?
Breathe.
Act.
Draw near the things that fill our cup. You cannot pour from an empty cup, as they say.
The trick is that even if the cup has been emptied by one part of your life, you can actually fill it from another. So, we can use these other elements to help fuel the fire we need to keep on moving through the challenges of life, be they challenges of the good sort or of the kind we never hoped to face.
Fire, water, earth or air: which one do you prefer?
Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on Sept. 15, 2026. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.
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