The Most Powerful Weapon

"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire." - Ferdinand Foch [as quoted in The 32d Infantry Division in World War II (1956) by Harold Whittle Blakeley, p. 3]. Foch was a French military general and when he talked about weapons, he was usually talking about the kind that exploded killing people. But not this time. So what did Foch mean when he talked about the ‘human soul on fire’?

When something is on fire, it is consumed. When the human soul is on fire it too is consumed with an ‘intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction’ for something. We might say it is consumed by passion. The first definition of SOUL [according to the Merriam Webster online dictionary] is ‘the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life’.

Over the last few years, we have often heard ‘The 10,000 Hour Rule’ quoted that with 10,000 hours of appropriate practice anyone can master a skill such as piano playing. [Matthew Gladwell in his book “Outliers’, 2008] Surely you would need to have an intense drive or desire in order to put in all those hours. You don’t become a great golfer, chess player or athlete without putting in hours and hours of practice and work. But without having a passion for it, it doesn’t happen.

We all often speak of being passionate about something or someone but how often is the person or thing actually the core principle we live by. We may be passionate about chocolate or playing bridge, but neither would qualify for a core principle. Those people who have managed to discover and then live by their core principle are those who are powerful weapons on this earth. People like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Archbishop Oscar Romero are some familiar names from this list.

Each one of us has the capacity to set our soul on fire. Sometimes the fire might be weak, sometimes it burns out quickly, sometime it proves to be a false fire without staying power. Once we have managed to get down to what our core belief or principle of life is, we will find ourselves filled with passion for whatever that is. We will be consumed by that passion and as Foch said, ‘we will become the most powerful weapon on earth’.

What sets your soul on fire?

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