Fireflies and snakes: people who shine and people who do not.

Drama is "a situation or event of great emotional intensity", and it is usually associated with the theater, the opera, the entertainment world - a world where feelings run beneath the skin, and emotions are much closer to the mouth and the eye, which are the boundaries of the body from the world.

Maria Callas

Being dramatic means to be excessive in everything – be it in something good or in something bad. It adds a hue to life: more color, more joy, more noise, more laughter, but also more crying, more sadness, more density. It is a characteristic of certain shining people – Maria Callas, for example, was unbearably dramatic, but her talent allowed her to be a real diva. However, there are very few people who have the ability to become divas!

And drama turns into a practically insoluble problem when you need to mingle with dramatic people on a daily basis - at banal times, in normal situations, in the usual places. Dramatic people with anonymous lives, who want to shine at all times, all the time.

Dramatic people need an audience and do not bear anyone else to shine. Remember the story of the snake that chased the firefly. As further as it flew away, the snake would not let go, and at the end of the third day, the already exhausted firefly asked:

– Do I belong to your food chain?

– No. – replied the snake, laconic.

– Did I do you any harm? – the firefly wanted to know, bewildered.

– No. – the snake replied again.

– Then why do you want to destroy me?

– Because I cannot stand to watch you shine.

There are people like this: they think they are the center of the world, and they do not forgive other people’s shine. Wherever they are, they cause drama: they suffer, they are controlling, they flounder, they impose themselves on others, they whine, and they blackmail. They speak louder than anyone else. They want to be always right. These are things of the ego!

All about them is visceral. There is no middle ground - there is no balance. There are very good days and very bad days. They have a kind of incurable bipolarity, which drags from breakfast to the last sigh before sleep.

None of this means that these people feel a greater love or deepest pain. It just means that the excess overflows from within them and enters the world of the other in a crude manner, because they are not aware of the boundaries of others.

It is difficult to outlive them – there’s not enough patience or affection to resist.

But what is truly sad is that, in most situations, they do not shine, because their routine does not contain these excesses.

Daisaku Ikeda

Daisaku Ikeda – philosopher, writer and Japanese Buddhist leader – says that people who hate being outgrown and resent not being the center of attention, have a small mind and occupy one of the lowest states of human existence. These beings often bring the worst to light: the worst of them and the worst of others.

Nelson Mandela

But not all people who shine are dramatic – and this is so much better. Infinitely better! These are people who have a distinctive light and do not need the drama. They suffice themselves. They are discrete, whilst leaving their marks engraved at the bottom of our hearts – Nelson Mandela, for example.

These people who shine are equivalent to fireflies glowing in the world of men. Spellbound fireflies, with their brilliant flights, and their vast tracks of light.

Some people recover the best of us, and there are people that exacerbate the worst of us. Without any apparent reason, without much explanation. It is simply this: there are snakes and there are fireflies. There are people who shine and there are people who do not shine. And that has nothing to do with the noise they make. And best of all are the fireflies - those who light up inside and illuminate everything effortlessly and without noise.