Chasing Fireflies

(This is a copy of an email I sent to my friends on June 15, 2007)

Dear friends:

I don't do this too often. Actually never. With some of you I'll send an amusing photo or link to a crazy YouTube video.. but this time I actually want to share an excerpt from a short story that I read while I was in Colombia.. and the beauty of the words has haunted me ever since.

I found this story in a book titled THE SIX PACK 2006, which is a yearly publication in New Zealand showcasing emerging writers from that country. I read all the stories.. in my opinion, some of them were passable, some of them were entertaining.. but there was one story that rocked my world. What makes it even more special was that after falling in love with the story, I read up on the author, Phoebe Wright, and found that she is only 15 years old.

For more information on this book, follow this link: http://nzbookmonth.co.nz/sixpack.aspx

This story is about Phoebe's personal search for the meaning of her family family, brilliantly told, and I encourage you to buy the book just to read her entire story. But it is the final paragraphs that really get to me. As she concludes her story, she tries to find the meaning in her search for truth. But what she has to say is so universal.. and even after months of reading these last few paragraphs.. her few and simple words give me goose-bumps, get me teary eyed and generally give me a little hope that I'm not the only one out here .. searching.

I hope that you enjoy them as much as I have.

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Excerpt from CHASING FIREFLIES by Phoebe Wright
Too Many Thoughts

Language is a clumsy thing. Why can't our thoughts just sublime? From pure meaning into gaseous human feeling, to be inhaled by one and all? Why must we label things, always label? The label becomes the thing; and any real meaning gets bored and wonders off. Labels are too clear-cut, why does the line between fact and fiction have to be so sharp? Perilously sharp. Anything that falls on the divide is killed, and its corpse becomes invisible. Yet languages, labels, are all we have.

I'm sitting watching children, fireflies, flicking through my notebook. My father believed in Fate, my mother tries to believe in God, my grandparents believe in everything and nothing, what do I believe? What is it I've been trying to say?

I will spend my life trying to bridge the gap between meaning and feeling, fact and fiction, make the passage pure, reach the unreachable truth. True artists tickle it almost by accident with their brushes, writers' hands touch its surface but leave it stained with ink, so all we get is light through a dirty window.

Musicians find only a small range of notes can be heard, artists find there are only so many possible colours, and no paint contains light, we are all bound by the limits of words, but we try.

We are all chasing fireflies, our beliefs, some sort of meaning; those who don't chase don't live. So we chase. Not to catch it, suffocate it with our hands, but just to get close enough to see its light on our fingertips. Even with a million miles of darkness ahead, to see one light in the distance is enough. To see its light in the eyes of another wonderer, to feel its warmth between you and call it love, is enough. To wonder at the chance of the occasional touching of souls, is it chance? Is there such a thing as Fate? It doesn't matter.

We are here, this is real, this matters. It is enough to keep me going. To keep the whole wide world turning. To keep us alive.