White-Hot
In the last few days two people I know well and respect have used the term “white-hot” to describe the most important parts of their respective stories. I don’t hear that term often, and I choose not to believe in coincidences, so I’m unpacking this expression to find what I am meant to learn from it. First, I’ll consider the contexts.
My first friend to use the term was describing fame and celebrity status, and the challenge of remaining at the absolute pinnacle of being the center of attention; the white-hot. He was there for some time himself, and being wiser now, tries to council younger stars on the danger of that game. I can only imagine that being in the white-hot as a celebrity is an extreme high of highs, and I’d imagine that’s about as precarious a place to be as in the highest highs of monetary and professional success, which I am more consistently exposed to. But the term white-hot doesn’t have much resonance for money. While some, especially in tech, conflate money and fame, thinking they have both but really only having one and yearning for the other, white-hot is all about attention. The physics of white-hot parlay into the reality.
The term white-hot originates from the phenomenon that occurs when a metal, like steel or tungsten, is heated to such a high temperature that it glows white. Tungsten glowing white hot is less exotic as that’s how traditional light-bulbs worked. It doesn’t require much heat to make Tungsten glow white. But steel is a different story, and that’s what this term really refers to.
It takes a lot to make steel begin to glow at all. There are some great videos of car exhausts getting so hot they start to glow red. Getting steel to glow white hot, when it becomes molten, requires much much more heat than that. In either case, it takes an incredible of continued energetic input to remain in those states. As I’ve seen in person, a glowing red exhaust cools almost immediately once an engine is shut off or simply no longer running at full revs. Once in the state of white-hot, it takes just about all the work it took to get there to stay there. Thankfully in a factory molten steel is poured quickly, and being white-hot is expected to be only a temporary state. But with fame, the human desire is to stay white-hot, and that’s simply a daunting task. My other friend used white-hot in a different human context.
In her case, she was refer to white-hot rage. I had never heard the expression before, I don’t think it’s a common one, but I know exactly what she meant. Someone close to her had reached a white-hot state and lashed out at her. To say that white-hot burns is possibly an understatemement. It takes an incredible of energy to get to white-hot, and it normally fades very quickly. Being on the receiving human receiving end of a white-hot outburst is the human emotional equivalent of being nuked. The person who was in white-hot rage was only in that state for a moment, but it left a mark on my friend, who was traumatized for some time after. An overarching theme here is that white-hot is danger, proceed with caution.
Yet, I am drawn to the white-hot. I know that it’s trouble, but it still tantalizes. I suppose that is true in many facets of my life. It’s almost as if true clarity is knowing that one still wants what they shouldn’t. I suppose clarity then is a tool and not an end. Maybe the lesson I will let myself experience the white-hot, if only for a moment. If I do, the challenge will be letting go. That imperative may one day prove a valuable lesson.
