Meteors remind us to cherish rare moments

Do you remember when you were five, maybe six, and held an empty pickle jar as if it were as big as the world? And it was once, cradled within the intimate embrace of your innocent touch, this gaping expanse entwined with naïve hope and small, clenched fingers.

You scampered amidst giggles and lost breaths and warm summer nights, jar held high, collecting the little flickers of meandering dreams your father once called lightning bugs. But you knew what they were, really. Them and that pickle jar, your dreams and the world. Because magic happened; magic always happened.

And you knew when you were five, maybe six, that you were holding it when you lifted the jar to the waning moon to see those flickering lights go on and off and on again — always on again.

I wish I were five again. Or maybe six. Because when I was younger, it was easy for me to smile at those lightning bugs trapped inside my dusty pickle jar, unscrew the thin, metallic cap and set them free.

There are very few lightning bugs in Los Angeles. As of yet, I haven’t seen a meadow vibrant with flickering lights — but at the wee hour of 1 a.m. on an early Tuesday morning, I found myself on a chaotic Malibu beach with some flickering lights of its own.

The open sky was our pickle jar. Like the dozens of other people there, we lay on our backs and watched the dancing sky — we watched meteors burst left and right, blazing moments of brilliance and rapture falling gracefully and disappearing silently. We lifted our hands and watched them fall into our very grasp only to vanish moments later. There we were, hands above our hands and pointed to the waning moon — and even though that pickle jar eluded our small fingers, we still knew it was magic of its own — the brilliant kind.

As I grew older, I became more doubtful and bitter toward the pickle jar collecting dust in the far left corner of my garage. Was it selfish of me to want those flickering lights, to close the lid with pinprick holes and place it at my window to compliment the moonlight shining in? My father had always told me to let them go, but I grew a little too greedy and once, when I was seven, snuck back into the house with a pickle jar full of glowing lights, cap snapped closed.

The next morning, I expected my new glittering friends to be waiting, suspended in that pickle jar. But in the light of day, there was no rush of light, no dwindling calm, no breath of a fresh world. Only the rough, raw sounds of forgotten remains, restlessly rubbing against the confines of smeared glass.

That’s the thing about remembering and brilliance, I learned. Of unscrewing that thin, metallic cap and letting go while you can.

It’s funny how things like flashing lights and streaking glimmers of radiance place the world in your hands and then, years later, somewhere in the eternal expanse above our heads. During a meteor shower, you don’t get the chance of capturing those flickering lights in an empty, dusty pickle jar — there is no risk of a selfish embrace destroying the dancing lights you only hoped to keep for yourself. But those moments, like those lightning bugs, will always be ephemeral. Temporary.

You know when you lie down on a beach in Malibu that you will be watching a few rushing moments of rapture — nothing more, nothing less. And even if you know that those meteors will return to you one day — perhaps, sometime in the next year — this is it. This is your only time to enjoy it, to relish in it, so you do.

One of my roommates, a girl who never fails to see the warmth in all things, joked that we were all taking time away from our schedules to “witness the universe.” As we stared up into the blistering night sky, we did just that — we all commented on our meager brevity but also on the amazing knowledge that despite any flaws, mistakes or corruption, unyielding beauty can still surround us.

So to all of you concerned with the forks in your roads, unscrew that thin, metallic cap, watch the lights streak across the sky and jiggle the world, just a little. I promise those lights will find their way back to you.

Tiffany Yang is a junior majoring in comparative literature. Her column, “Alphabet Soup,” runs Wednesdays.