When Heroes Are Scarce, Maybe We Just Need To Look At Animals For Inspiration

This is four minutes long, and in my view, worth the investment

All of the wisdom is contained in the unstoppable force that makes these chicks take the plunge despite how frightening it is.

• They are disciplined; they have an inner wisdom. They know when to be unstoppable, and they know when to stop. — I sometimes get those two confused and I want to be unstoppable when I need to stop and rest.
• Their purpose is crystal clear; there is no confusion of what they are going to do. — Even though I think that I am clear on my purpose, I am sometimes foggy and fearful about it, and my going starts to resemble that of a bumble bee.
• They take the chance full on, do or die, no kidding. In the story of the chicks on this video, (I won’t tell you; I hope you watch it, but there is a huge risk involved). — I often am paralyzed for fear of making a mistake; I am embarrassed to admit this. I make excuses, “I am independent and I have to be self-reliant; I can’t mess up”.
• They aren’t all dramatic; they are stoic. If they made it, good; they get to join mom and dad, and live a cycle of life; if they didn’t, they didn’t, and no one is mourning in a debilitating way for someone else’s fate. — This seems cruel, but is it really? How would it benefit the ones who didn’t make it if the ones who made it were destroyed in sadness for their sake? It wouldn’t; it doesn’t make any sense how we do some things. But we do them because we are accustomed to doing them that way, and we are expected to do them a certain way. That isn’t wise.

The eaglets’ first flight is caused by a lot of discontent with the current conditions and the pressures of their growth

I have known this story for many years and I have enjoyed the parallels I have found in my own life.

Here is how it happens:

When the eaglets are first born, the nest is huge for them and everyone is happy. Mom and dad are hunting up a storm and feeding them all the time.

Before long, the eaglets start growing and growing and growing; and suddenly, the formerly nice and spacious nest is no longer either. The poop, their size, the bumping on each other all the time… it starts to become unbearable.

They keep growing until it becomes apparent: they are going to have to leave the nest, and there is only one way to do it: plunge.

But they don’t know how to fly! Surely they will die!

They become so desperate that no matter what the risk is, staying back is not an option. And they take the plunge, only to find that their wings are perfectly adequate, and that this is the world they were born to experience, — not the nest to which they were so attached.

We humans grow attached to everything, even bad situations. It isn’t that our ego is “happy”, but it just doesn’t want anything to change, even for the better. We stay in the noise of our lives, the noise of the external world, the noise of our heads, and we very often fail to taste the reality for which we were born, and we never extend those wings and fly; fly away from the nest that was intended to incubate us for a term, but not forever.

We must move on if we are to evolve. Even if it feels like a death of sorts; in a way it is because we are leaving behind what is familiar to us. Paul admonishes the followers to “die daily”. But we mustn’t focus on the “dying” part so much, but rather on the living more abundantly part that comes after we surrender and become willing to risk it all. — I am trying to learn these lessons; by no means do I count myself as one who has learned them well yet.

I think that we can and we should encourage one another in this journey of unstoppable forward movement. We all face very similar challenges, fears, hopes, ideals, needs and wants; and paradoxically, each time any of us chooses to “get lost in it”, we find ourselves anew.

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PS On the video, the third chick is the one who touches my heart the most. Bless his little, courageous, resilient heart; he might as well be a fully-grown lion.

Copyrighted material 2017