As June turned into July, college administrations announced their presence and decisions. Nature had a better announcement.

Fireflies!

The first Monday evening of July I spent awhile outside after the sun had set. I decided that I would make an attempt to workout in my backyard. I began with a light two laps circling less than a third of an acre, the dynamic warm-ups I could still remember from Frisbee practices that feel like eons ago, then preceded to sprint around this way and that across the four sides of my house on four different stretches of grass and finally concluded with stretching while counting out loud: one, two, three, quatre, cinq, six, sept… I felt invigorated. I felt alive and that’s when I first saw them, in front of my eyes, fireflies!

Mankind has had an obsession to conquer nature or rather the mankind I learn about in most of my history classes. Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance, 500 years ago, is most likely the first I heard in history of humans getting close to flight and then the modern airplane more recently. Through fire millions of years ago and electricity and the light bulb more recently, mankind “conquer” light.

The firefly did flight and light long before people did, and even better, are not causing light pollution or carbon emissions…

However, was I thinking about this as I scampered around my yard trying to get a closer look at the magical creature that could fit into the palm of my hand? No, I was too busy trying to see what they looked like and if I could draw them afterwards from memory. So, having the time to reflect allows for greater revelations and thoughts to be made.

Yet, our current world allows for little to no time for reflection. There is no downtime if you don’t make it happen with entertainment, communication and content access 24/7. It’s go, go, go, go. Until, of course, you crash and then sleep, sleep, sleep. I wonder if that’s why some people like the summer. You can sit in a chair outside somewhere and just be.

Or, you can scamper after fireflies without caring if you need to capture them in a photo, turn in an assignment or make the right number of sales for the next quarter.

One of my favorite movies of all time is: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. In a nutshell, it’s about breaking the rules and taking your destiny into your own hands. If I saw the movie today, I probably would find many, many more problematic things than when I first saw it as a kid, but that aside, one of my favorite movie lines of all time is: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

I personally don’t see Ferris wondering around his backyard or a local park at night looking at fireflies, but ever since coming to Wellesley College and being on Wellesley’s campus, the quote pops into my head every once in a while. So, I’ll literally stop, and do a 360 when I’m walking to, or more likely, from an event or another place on campus. I’ve paused to gaze at the stars, the lake, a cute bug crawling across the sidewalk or the looming trees all around me.

I will say the line doesn’t pop into my head as much while I’m at home, but I would argue that the Paulson Summer Internship embodies the quote, at least how I interpreted it, in many ways.

I challenge you to step outside at an hour you normally wouldn’t spend an hour outside and see if you can see something you haven’t seen in awhile.