Free the Fireflies

Summer always reminds me of childhood when I would play outside with friends until dusk and beyond. On many evenings when the light faded, the soft glow of fireflies pulled us from whatever game we'd made up and shifted the activity to chasing the magical creatures. To catch a firefly you needed that ideal mixture of darkness and light: dark enough to zero in when one lit up, but still light enough to follow it once the glow faded.

One night when the fireflies were unusually dense, we scattered throughout the yard to capture them with gentle swipes of cupped hands. I ran inside for an old jar with a lid and after thirty minutes, the curved glass glowed with a living treasure. We all perched on the concrete steps behind my house to marvel at the beauty of lightning in a jar. We stayed, mesmerized, until the neighborhood began to echo with parents’ voices, a magical event in itself that led to kids disappearing one by one into the darkness. When it was my turn, I took the jar inside and placed it on my dresser where I later fell asleep to a nightlight only nature could create.

When I awoke the next morning and my sleepy eyes came to rest on the jar, my excitement reignited. But it withered fast when I moved closer to stare at a bunch of dead bugs. Before me was a valuable lesson:

Fireflies don’t thrive in jars. They need air and open space. They need to be free so kids can chase them into the night.

Isn’t it the same with the dreams each of us have? How many of us, as we age, place those dreams in

Click to read more ...

Live Outside the Lines

Life on the ground is often rigid. We spend the better part of our days living between the lines, whether it’s the boundaries of a house or office, the narrow edges of a sidewalk, or the slightly wider lines of a highway. It’s easy to believe we’re well-traveled until we realize that all we’re doing is swapping out the confines of one city for another.

I think that’s one of the reasons I like flying. From the air, the lines are blurred, if seen at all. From the air, most of those lines mean nothing. I can slice them up, crossing at odd angles, but best of all, I can ignore them. On the ground, I have to follow the lines, bound by a path someone else put down long ago.

Then there are the invisible lines drawn all around us. Society wants us to “walk the line,” to “stay on the straight and narrow.” It expects us to “keep it between the lines,” and above all, forbids us to “cross the line.”

For today,

Click to read more ...

From a Distance

As I neared my speaking venue, I suddenly regretted not making time to wash my car. The thin film of dust on the vehicle’s black hood looked even worse through my bug-bombed windshield. So much for the inspirational speaker leading by example; who will value the message when the messenger arrives in a filthy car?

The feeling intensified when every vehicle in the parking lot seemed cleaner than mine. I pulled to the lot’s far side, locked up, and headed toward the building’s entrance.

That’s when I noticed it.

All those cars that had looked so clean when I’d pulled into the lot, now revealed their own films of dust and bug-splotched windshields as I moved passed them. My car, in the distance, looked immaculate.

My topic that day was the first blog post I’d ever written: White-Knuckle Living: How to Succeed by Letting Go. But after my experience outside, I added an item: 

Click to read more ...