Mindfulness

For me, growing up on the East Coast meant the pleasure of seeing fireflies in the summer. But my daughter, who was born in California, had never seen one. In our travels we discovered there were fireflies in the tropical nights of Bali. After she went to bed one night, I tucked in her mosquito net, then went out and caught a few. Her eyes were closed. I put them in her net and whispered for her to wake up. They flew around inside her net until we let them out, and she was totally captivated by their luminous trails in the night. How improbable and fantastic, how unlikely to have beautiful insects with soft blinking lights—yet this is no more unlikely than our loving hearts. Our hearts shine in the same way as the fireflies, with the same light as the sun and the moon.