I'm smiling.

I'm listening to Fireflies by Owl City. And smiling.

Not because I want to make you laugh, not this time.

Because I am inspired.  And I want, in turn, to be inspiring.

When was the last time you saw something that made you smile?

When was the last time you heard a song that made you simply glad to be alive?

When was the last time YOU were the source of that kind of inspiration?

I always know when I'm in the presence of something great: whenever I am, I want to do that great thing myself.  When I listen to great music, it makes me want to sing, to break out my guitar and start callusing up my fingers again so that I can make that kind of music and touch people in that way.  When I read a great book, it makes me want to sit down in front of my computer and write the sequel, or write another story set in the same universe that I have just found such joy in inhabiting.

When I sit in the presence of a great human being, it makes me want to be great for others.

It's almost childish, this yearning to emulate, to be, to become what makes me glad.  A child will tell a joke and, if it gets a laugh, will tell it a thousand times, and then a thousand times more.  As long as the laughs keep coming, the child is happy.  The child has the same kind of glee that I find myself feeling while listening to Fireflies.

This is an unusual blog entry for me.  There is no attempt on my part to make you laugh.  Not this time.  I just want you to think of something that gives you happiness.  A cup of cocoa on a winter day, with the blizzard outside pounding on the windows.  A perfect red autumn leaf that has fallen to the sidewalk in a way that makes you believe that God did it Himself, just so you would have something beautiful to see today.  The smell of new-mown grass on a summer weekend morning, the kind of smell that bears the promise of a single perfect day with it like some kind of inhalable prophecy.

Think of those things.  Think of fireflies, dancing in a cool spring evening, lighting up the night and using the light to attract mates: to attract what will result in union, in creation.

I listen to some music and I smile.  I believe, for a moment, that I could write music like that.

I watch some movies and I laugh.  I sit down and try to write a movie that will make someone else laugh the way I just did.

I see some people and they seem to glow.  Like fireflies.  And the glow is contagious.  It makes me glow, too, in a chain of light and happiness that could stretch around the globe, if only...

If only we could find the people...

Fireflies flash in the darkness to find one another.  The glow is a way to attract friends in the night.

I know people who glow like that.  And I thank God for them.  For those fireflies who light up the evenings of my life, who create out of darkness a beautiful dance of light that attracts others to it and shows them where they can find peace, safety, sanctuary, friendship.

We all dance in the dark, you know.  It's just the way we're made.  The darkness comes from all sides, and we dance.  Sometimes we manage to glow.

And sometimes, if we are very lucky - or very blessed - the glow we cast will help someone else find their own illumination.  To find their own light.  To find their own way in the darkness.

We of all creatures are truly blessed.  Not fireflies, but people, lighting the way for each other.

And I am inspired.

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