burn

This is a rather beautiful word. It is significant that a word denoting a process of total destruction is also used to describe the state of one who feels passionately about something or someone. Shall we verge on the political and ponder how this link between passion and destruction might relate to the current state of the world? Let's not; we are simply talking about a word. To hear that a person burns is to envy or to pity, depending on whether it is by emotion or flame that they are consumed. One is to live, the other to die. Joan of Arc experienced both as most of us will experience neither, and despite her short life it can be said that she lived more than the vast majority of us. When she was literally burned, it was perhaps a larger death not because of her fame, or because she lost more years, but because she had already been burning figuratively, and so much more brightly.