Don't play with it

When I was younger I used to chase fireflies in the field beside my house. We had just moved here and there were no signs of development for a constructive purpose yet. It was just a wide open field with tall grass full of butterflies for chasing and catching (alive and well) in masses during the golden hour while you watched daylight turn the rich green colour of healthy wild grass into a colour tinted with the shade of amber.  Releasing them then, back into their home ecosystem as soon as the sun had disappeared and watching them spiral into the air happily and relieved into a dusk veiled sky. 

At night, it was for watching fireflies (where I am from on the island we call them lightening bugs) pop slowly and with little purpose over the then black grassy plain.

Watching them was and is still amazing; so majestic, it seemed to me. So much so that when I heard those lyrics 'Would you believe your eyes...when ten thousand fire flies...light up the world....'  it made me vividly nostalgic.

When I saw them at first they would always be alone; just one bobbing, as if the weight of their light and their beauty was too heavy to keep them steady. Yet, purposeful and driven they flew on, sharing their light with me, with every on looker. Lighting up the world like no human could imagine or conjure....

Much like the creative. Much like the artisan. Much like the ascetic.

Funny story: lightening bugs always seem to move faster to me when in pairs. Every time I sat in silence marvelling at a lightening bug, whether in that field or in the verandah of my own home, I would almost hold my breath as a voice in the back of my consciousness whispered 'Wait for it...'

Sure enough a while later as the first lightening bug was well on it's way, whether from underneath the leaf of a fig tree our from the grassy dark plain or just somewhere out of my peripheral vision, would come a next lightening bug. Soon they would catch up, if not then almost but they would both suddenly seem to be moving so much faster into the distance....birthing a different kind of beauty for my eyes to feast upon.

I feel like the weight of an artists' creativity is like the lone lightening bug.

I recently saw an image, surfing around. It said something along the lines of surround yourself with people who light your path. I have found that good friends and or supporters don't just light your path. Hey lets face it, scarcely is that what we need. We don't need someone to provide the light for us, we have our own light, this is the age of the independent remember? More often what we need is someone to hold their light up as they walk beside us so that we can see further than beyond our footsteps, farther than the top of our toes that we thought would have been further along the track by now. Someone to improve upon our vision when our hands grow heavy with doubt so that we end up lowering our lanterns.

It is then that a good friend raises their own light, in that moment when the darkness of self doubt, obstacles or just plain tiredness seems thickest, when our own light feels too heavy for our hands.

Motivation is a powerful thing, a good friend is there to remind you not so much of the things you have not yet done but of how far you come and how capable you are of going so much farther.

Preferably over wine.




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