The Firefly's Paradise

The small village of Kuala Selangor, in Malaysia, is touristically famous for its unique attraction: Fireflies! 

Yes, there is a natural reserve there, or a protected place if you like, where people can go and pay to watch the spectacle of lights provided by these blessed creatures. Some people, like us, even travel distances to see this event.

The visit to this place messed with my memories as it took me back to my childhood and some inevitable recollections came to my mind, like when during Christmas time we used to run after these misterious flying little things which we considered magical, because they blinked so beautifully. As a matter of fact, the childhood world is much more pure, full of enchantments, of magic which we lose little by little while we grow up and the cruel school of life takes away most of our fantasies and beliefs.

As little kids we used to associate Christmas to the starting of the fireflies season, as if those little blinking lights were the annunciation that the time of joy, cheerfulness, distribution of gifts, visiting of cousins and dear friends was closing in. In our innocent happiness, we ran through dusty streets and into the bushes in pursue of the blinking creatures. Some of us who were more mischievous used to capture one or two of the fireflies and proudly bring them back in a glass bottle for everyone to see in awe, like a trophy. Then our ever watchful parents used to warn us not to harm the poor little insect because it was a scout sent earlier by baby Jesus to check upon us and determine who had behaved enough to be worthy of gifts and who was not. That was enough for the little frightened animal to immediately regain its freedom and we all were happy to see them restarting their erratic flight and joining the others, blinking on and on...

Nowadays there are little reminiscences from this magical world, or from this magical time that we had the opportunity to live in. And I would go as far as saying that's our own fault. Ever busier parents as we are, we abdicated from our children in our quest for the construction of materialism, of an empty wealth. We sometimes justify ourselves saying that we are sacrificing as much so our children will have a better future, when in reality all we get is robotic kids, mechanical and soulless human beings, who did not learn love.

Self-centered as we are we exchange the love we should give by ever more expensive and sophisticated gifts, maybe out of the guilt we feel for having hijacked the Nature from our kids. Nowadays all we have left are natural reservations and parks where we keep imprisoned and where we pay to see what has survived from the beautiful work of Nature, which we have so unbalanced out of our selfishness.

Sitting on the wooden bench of that small rowing boat slowly cruising  along the banks of the little river in Kuala Selangor, from time to time reaching the branches of the bushes teeming with fireflies, at the same time that our eyes were filling with tears of enchantment, a deep sorrow was also taking shape in our hearts. The sorrow to know that, due to our fault and neglect maybe the lives our children would be more disrupted if,  instead of natural miracles like the fireflies, were the video games going to be extinct.

 Note:

The village of Kuala Selangor is at a 1,5 hour drive from the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and the road is sidelined by beautiful and lush landscaping, especially the endless plantations of palm trees responsible for one of Malasia's main export commodities, the palm oil.