Learning to Fly

I have a strange obsession with birds. I’m not a twitcher and I don’t know much about them, but when I’m out walking the dog, I derive inordinate pleasure from following the song of a bird to the musician hidden on a branch, or seeing a flock filling the world around me with life. 

Every magpie I see reminds me of Conall’s first school play where he was Magpie Mac and I always hope to see two because the song the kids sang included “1 for sorrow, 2 for joy, 3 for girls and 4 for boys.” That then reminds me of the Counting Crows song, “A Murder of One,” which also includes those lines… and these:

There’s a bird that nests inside you

sleeping underneath your skin

when you open up your wings to speak

I wish you’d let me in…

All your life is such a shame

All your love is just a dream

Open up your eyes

You can see the flames

of your wasted life

You should be ashamed

You don't want to waste your life

I walk along these hillsides in the summer 'neath the sunshine

I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me

That takes me back to Ithaca, NY where I went to university and would walk along the hillsides, listening to that song and think “you don’t want to waste your life…”

But is there such a thing as a wasted life? 

Though I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about it, the older I get the less I think so. There are wasted opportunities, perhaps. And wasted time. But there’s no wasted life. 

Life is about learning. About growing. About becoming something different at the end than we are at the beginning. So even if a life is cut short, it can’t be wasted because it will have impacted the journey others take.

I’m learning a little about Buddhism from a dear friend. She was telling me that it’s never too late to find one’s true path. You shouldn’t fear having “wasted” time or opportunity because whatever you’ve learned from whatever you’ve done will move you toward your higher self. 

She assured me that you must simply keep going. Keep searching. Keep exploring. Keep learning. Keep discovering. If you wake up in the morning, then there is something you are meant to do. Some way you are meant to grow. There’s no such thing as “too late.”

Even if you’ve made a thousand mistakes, each new dawn gives you a chance at a clean slate, a fresh start. 

To have that new start, you must let go of fear, pain and anger from the past. It’s an unnecessary burden for your journey, weighing you down as you try to move forward. 

Though it may be hard to forgive, you free yourself when you let go of your hurt, allow scars to fade, release grudges or resentment. You lighten your load and make the path easier. 

This isn’t to say your past is irrelevant. It informs who you are, but it does not define you... unless you let it. Failure is an event, not a state of being. Whatever has occurred before is not who you are in this moment and need not be part of your future. 

But that future depends on your actions today. It depends on your willingness to open your mind to the possibility of the new and take steps in the direction of your purpose.

Though dreams may sometimes seem far away and unrealistic, my friend quoted Nichiren Daisonin: “The journey from Kamakura to Kyoto takes twelve days. If you travel for eleven but stop with only one day remaining, how can you admire the moon over the capital?” 

(Very similar to the Paulo Coelho quote about dying the desert just as the oasis appears.)

Sometimes I feel like I squeeze a dream too hard. I ascribe my sense of worth to its achievement and when times passes without its fulfillment, the niggles of self-doubt pervade and that craggy, sick voice in my head vies for my attention whispering “you’re too old, it’s too late, you’re not good enough.”  The other day my heart was hurting as the voice grew loud. That’s when I reached out to my friend. And she told me to keep walking. To release the fear and memories of failure so my way is easier.

I can’t remember where, but I once heard someone say that you shouldn’t put pressure on a dream, you should hold it in the open palm of your hand and allow it to be. I think, though I could be mistaken, that it had something to do with cracking an egg by squeezing your hand too hard.

Which, believe it or not, brings me back to my birds. 

There’s a bird that nests inside you, sleeping underneath your skin. Give it it’s freedom. Let it be. Allow it to emerge in its own time, in its own way.

The first time a bird flies, it does not think to itself, “but all the other birds can do this already.” It doesn't worry that the other birds are better. It does not think about grander birds or more beautiful birds or more agile. It opens its wings and allows the wind to lift it. It trusts in its instincts and follows some knowledge ingrained in its being. 

Then it defies gravity and soars above its world, open to infinite possibility. 

It doesn’t need to know how it flies or why it flies. It just needs to trust that it does fly. And so can we. 

You had a chance to be better this morning. And to be better again tomorrow… because every day that you wake up is a chance to do something different. Be who you really want to be. Change something about yourself. Create a new life. 

If you haven’t watched this in a while, I highly recommend spending the 5 minutes to be inspired. “Everybody dies, but not everybody really lives.”

I hope all my friends in the US are safe and warm, today. Thinking of you!