What We See When the Light Dims
A story about fireflies, fatherhood, and finding your place in the universe—even if it’s not center stage.
"But the fireflies will be sad!"
I had just told my son it was time to come in and get ready for bed. He had spent the first 30 minutes of twilight running through our backyard chasing fireflies. His goal was to have them land on his hand, blink, and then move on. No jars here. Just gentle hands. Unlike me at his age, to my son, fireflies aren't trophies. They're friends. And now he was afraid of letting his friends down.
"I know, buddy. But they'll be okay, and you'll be back tomorrow."
Rather than allowing myself to be present and attentive to my son's quest for glowing compadres, I'd spent the time still dealing with leftover guilt from a breakfast fight with him the previous morning. My son had long moved on, but I couldn't shake the nagging sense that I should have done better. I was still so far from the dad I wanted to be.
As we climbed the deck stairs to re-enter the house, my son noticed a firefly hovering around his shoulder.
"Look! He's following us!"
It flew just ahead of us and hovered around the door, then back toward my son as I tried to usher him in.
"He wants to come in! Come on, friend! Daddy, can he stay in my room?"
"I don't think the firefly wants to sleep in your room. His family is out here."
As it usually does, it took some doing to get him settled down for bed. My annoyance showed, but I did my best to keep it at bay as I opened Silly Sally, our current storytime obsession.
"Silly Sally went to town, walking backw-"
"DADDY! HE'S HERE!"
"Buddy, don't interrupt. Who's here?"
"My firefly friend! He came to my room!"
My son was gazing with wonder at the far wall, but I didn't see it. I tried to keep my annoyance at bay by reminding myself he's four. His perspective is that the universe revolves around him. Of course, the firefly would follow him in. He's the lead in this movie.
I let it go and continued reading the book.
Later, after the book was shut and my son's head finally hit the pillow, I waited for him to fall asleep and tried to remember a time when I felt at the center of the universe. I guess we all do, from time to time, but more and more as we get older, many of us start to feel expendable to the grand scheme, especially in circumstances like those I currently find myself in, where things haven't exactly gone as I'd hoped.
Whenever I head down this line of thinking, I tend to retreat. But this time, something in me made me sit with it. And after the initial storm of self-loathing passed, my perspective shifted. I began a debate with myself, the thesis of which I'll present here.
Whether your beliefs lean spiritual, scientific, or at some point on the spectrum between the two, you can't deny that—as Wendell Berry said— "we live within an order and this order is both greater and more intricate than we can know."
Whether intentional or not, a denial of your identity is a disruption of this order. I've written before on Sympathia—the interconnectedness of the universe. In this culture, it's easy to feel disconnected. Individualist culture breeds a sense that we need to bring worthiness to our existence. We must compete for our place in the world. Collaboration shows weakness. However, after years of fighting, you may not feel like you’ve made progress—or worse, like you’ve fallen behind. If you're anything like me, you grew up believing you were the central character in your own story, and now that you're grown, you've lost the plot.
You don't feel the sense of importance you thought you would or you once did. But just because you don't feel it doesn't mean it isn't there.
You opened your eyes today. More importantly, at least one other human opened their eyes today, and it's your job to make sure it happens again tomorrow. You might feel unworthy of that role and many others you're playing each day, but your very existence within the roles you play is proof of your worthiness. The reason you haven't understood this before is that you were correct in thinking a story was playing out, but you were mistaken in thinking the story is about you. You are but an extra—at best, a supporting actor. Our culture of social media curation and manufactured longing has caused even the most confident among us to experience some sense of self-doubt and self-hatred.
This is especially true for dads, often cast in the role of the sidekick—the Robin to Mom's Batman. Culture places us on a conveyor belt toward a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's so easy to feel like there's no point in trying to do better because Mom is the best.
But if we can turn off the fire hose for a bit and take a moment to make friends with the person we are, our life's script—the one we might've considered long lost—will once again start to write itself. We will understand our role not from a frame of self-importance, but from one of communal essentialism. An effective parenting partnership never consists of two Michael Jordans both calling for the ball as the clock ticks to zero. Good parenting happens when—excuse the continued 90s Chicago Bulls metaphor—Tony Kukoc meets Horace Grant and both can roleplay their way to the title. To be our best selves, we must be prepared to play whatever role we're given. To borrow another line from Wendell Berry, "We live the given life, and not the planned."
I pulled myself out of my Bulls-themed existentialist trance and noticed my son had finally fallen asleep. As I dimmed his lamp and turned to sneak out of the room, I saw a bright light out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, there was a firefly in the room with us the whole time. As I left the room, I thought my four-year-old and this firefly might understand their roles in the universe in a way I've long forgotten. And perhaps we'd all be better off if we tried to recapture it—not in a jar, but with gentle hands.