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Creativity Quote by Ziggy Marley

"This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened"

About this Quote

Ziggy Marley frames enlightenment not as a mountaintop revelation but as a close-up encounter with a bug that refuses to be background scenery. The dragonfly hovers inches from his face, and suddenly the usual human hierarchy collapses: he is no longer the observer owning the moment; he is the observed. That small pivot in perspective is the engine of the quote. Marley doesn’t describe what the dragonfly looks like; he describes what it does to his attention. The “How does he see me?” isn’t biology homework. It’s a spiritual question disguised as curiosity, a quick doorway into humility.

The subtext is very Marley: consciousness arrives through nature, not through an institution. In a culture where “enlightenment” often gets packaged as a brand of wellness, he keeps it radically unglamorous and immediate. The dragonfly functions like a living mirror, forcing a recognition that other minds are moving through the world with their own sensory realities. You can hear the Rastafarian-inflected ethic behind it: creation is charged, the everyday is sacred, and insight is less about escaping the world than tuning into it.

Context matters, too. As Bob Marley’s son, Ziggy has spent a career navigating inherited prophecy and public expectations. This story sidesteps the mythos of the stage and locates revelation off-mic, in a quiet moment where nothing is being performed. The line “I became enlightened” lands almost comically blunt, but that bluntness is the point: awakening can be sudden, ordinary, and a little embarrassing in its simplicity.

Quote Details

TopicWisdom
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Marley, Ziggy. (2026, January 15). This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/this-dragonfly-came-up-to-me-he-was-hovering-168757/

Chicago Style
Marley, Ziggy. "This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/this-dragonfly-came-up-to-me-he-was-hovering-168757/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/this-dragonfly-came-up-to-me-he-was-hovering-168757/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Ziggy Marley

Ziggy Marley (born October 17, 1968) is a Musician from Jamaica.

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