Learning to Fly

Falling Free

“Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom.

How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,

they’re given wings.

                                  Jalal ud-Din Rumi

         All summer long, I’ve seen fully feathered baby birds hopping around on the ground, looking dazed.  They are wondering what just happened.  They’ve been unceremoniously kicked from the nest in hopes that they would spread their wings and fly.  Sometimes when I walk close to them, they flutter up awkwardly and land on a low branch.  Sometimes they just sit there hunkered down, not knowing what to do.  Not everyone learns to fly on their first try.  Sometimes the anxious parents follow them to the ground, scolding and squawking.   I can just hear them saying, “Open your wings, you ninny!  You can fly!”

         There is nothing quite as majestic as a great bird circling in the air currents, high up and riding the wind.  I often stop to watch.  Even vultures are beautiful fliers.  And none of them would be there wheeling and soaring, if they hadn’t been kicked from the nest.  I feel sorry for the bird-parents.  It has to be hard to watch helplessly, while the child that they’ve worked so hard to feed and protect goes plummeting toward the earth.  It must be a heart-stopping moment. 

         Being booted from our comfortable nest is something that happens from birth to death.  Sometimes it actually takes an act of violence to shove us out, even though we know full well that we have wings.  It’s the plunge that frightens us; that head-first descent, dizzying, and at the same time, exhilarating.  Whether it is shooting through the birth canal into the light of day, walking into kindergarten on our first day of school, carrying trunks into our first dorm room, walking down the aisle to the wedding march, into the hospital to deliver our first child, or into an office for our first job—sometimes we need a push to get there.  We have to fall before we fly, but we don’t like it.

         It is even more difficult to be the parent, watching a beloved child take the plunge.  We want to cling to them.  We want to prepare them for the difficulties of the fall.  We want to get beneath them to soften the landing.  We want to protect them from life’s low branches and prowling predators.  But they too must fall before they fly, for it is in the falling that they learn they have wings. 

                                  In the spirit,

                                  Jane