Fireflies & Foxes

Let me start by saying something. I am quite a superstitious person. I never walk under ladders, I always throw split salt over my right shoulder, I am a firm believer in Karma and I fit my horoscope to a T.

I am a Scorpio. Jealous, obsessive, indulgent, vengeful, passionate. Yes, that's me. If I had to pick one vice or one sin to admit to, it would envy. Yes, that's right. I am a jealous person, and I'm letting God and the internet know it.

So today I was feeling a lot of things - resentful, angry, and most of all jealous. All day I was freaking out about the tiniest things - a text message, a facebook post and worst of all, I was obsessing about my life and the way I am living it.

And all day long I was looking forward to my run after work. Sometimes when I have so much aggression and energy I can just run (or walk) for hours and tire myself out. Being that it was LITERALLY 100 degrees outside I had to wait until the sun was setting to go out because I wanted to check out the running trail I found this weekend that's about a block from my house. While I was running (and improving my mile time, thank you very much) I was listening to some new music that I downloaded earlier that evening. On my way back I noticed something amazing.

The woods next to my new apartment is home to thousands of lightning bugs. They flew slowly in and out of trees, their lights becoming brighter as the sun sank low. As I was walking through these lightning bugs there was a moment where I let all of my jealousy go and realized that I was the only one in the world experiencing that moment in time, and that moment was a gift from God, from the Universe, from Karma and from Nature.

I also noticed something else- two foxes were standing in the road ahead of me. As I came closer to them, they both darted into the forest, and I couldn't even snap a picture. But as I approached the fireflies, they let me hold them as they lit up in my hands. That's when I realized I need to gravitate towards light to be truly happy, nothing more, nothing less.

It's hard for me (as a Liberal Arts Graduate) not to mention Thoreau in a moment like this, because, well, he knew that this was true before any of us did. That a walk in the woods can clear the mind, the soul, and bring you closer to God.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

- Walden, Henry David Thoreau

Mal xoxo

PS. I bet I could have also discovered this by drinking a large chocolate milkshake, but I took the long way around. Wearing my black stretchy pants.