The Firefly or lightning bug is a bug which glows in the darkness, with a light that comes from within. It has often been thought that fairies, willow wisps, and other magical creatures rumored to grant the catcher wishes got their origins from our superstitious ancestors seeing fireflies. Owl City's hit single "Fireflies" draws on this belief and makes the analogy that fireflies are the dreams and imagination of children, or the "Magic" of childhood. I find this thought very illuminating(pardon the pun), for as children we have so many dreams of what our life can become with the infinite possibilities of our future. We catch a few of these "fireflies" place them in a jar and they help guide us into adulthood.
As we get older it seems as though many of those fireflies from our past have died or moved on to greener pastures. The magic of our childhood is spent with many if not all of those dreams having seemingly vanished and have gone extinct along with that childhood version of ourselves that dreamt them. We no longer sit in our basements pretending to be a movie-star or astronaut for it feels as though that ship sailed long ago. The room goes dark for us and we sit in the darkness.
We need not sit in the darkness when all we really need to do is dream once again and find those fireflies to light up those dark places. It is important to have these dreams of a better reality for ourselves, for that is where all of a humans hope resides. These dreams which spurn our hope can be caught and placed into a jar through making goals to make our future better. So when the lights next go out and things get hard in our lives forcing us to lose our vision, we have a light to remind us of what might be in our futures which give us more of a reminder of why we brave the darkness.
The world is under the misconception that the way a person is able to become adult is through taking that dreaming child inside of them to the river behind their house and drowning them. Just be an adult and accept things the way they are and accept your lot in life. That may be a way of adulting, I'm just not so sure it is a healthy way of adulting. Maybe instead of burying that piece of us in a unmarked grave that only we know where it rests, when next that child peeks around the corner of our minds we invite them to take a seat with us, we place our owns around them and feel, cry, and dream together.
The world may be to harsh and cold to let that dreamer survive, but are we?
