What if I could do a little dance in a cosmic twist, flip gravitational pull off like a heavy coat, bend and stretch my legs and arms so they become wings to take me, and lift my soul to escape above all those things down here, that often weigh me down, as a human being? No rent. No bills. No heavy traffic lights that make it hard to go/deal with. Just me and whatever is free in the expansive, airy, blue sky over my head, in every direction as far as I can see.
I look down and see the world I used to call home. It looks calm, like a painted picture, but I am aware of the seams, the imperfections, the bumps and scars on the earth. As a human being, it feels like I'm always tied up with a strapless bra corset of social contracts, unwritten rules, and a constant worry that "tomorrow" may get in my way. I have to plan, control, and manage, but as a bird? I get to be my true self.
If I was hungry as a bird, I would go wherever there are fruit trees or fields with fertile grains. No supermarkets, no price tags, and most importantly, no worries about whether my money that I carefully earned will last. I would simply take the gifts of Mother Nature, freel given and in abundance. That sounds like freedom to me!
Check out these photos I took. They portray the beauty that this world also possesses, but is so frequently overshadowed by human suffering and confusion. As a bird, I would fly above, the boundaries and walls we humans hastily construct would be visible to me. I would travel from continent to continent, moving towards the sunrise with no visas or passport checks. The earth would be my endless garden, every tree my preferred home, and every gust or whisper of the wind my steering committee.
I would spread my wings, and into the updraft I would surrender – and the soft breath of the wind would take me in whatever direction my heart would pull me. Just imagine changing perspective, seeing the world, and sometimes harshness of it all, with an entirely different, higher level view. Maybe, I would begin to understand that all human worries, all of the stress and haste, are just small perturbations on a larger, infinite pattern. Instead I could see the Earth, as a pulsating, breathing being whose energy I could simply delete to.
Communication would be uncomplicated and direct: a call, a song, a dance in the sky. No ambiguity, no deception, no duplicity, no pretentious expressiveness. I would live in a perfect condition of harmony with my fellow creatures, each in their spot, each contributing, without envy, without greed. A flock of birds dancing in the early dawn sky is a living poem of cooperation and faith in one another. Now that would be a spiritual experience, day after day.
Can you imagine the sun warming my feathers, the wind pulling my wings, and me just there, carried in the current of life. No ponderous growth, no oppositional life, only being. I would experience a pure and simplistic freedom of body and mind being in total harmony with everything that is. Now that is liberation from the constraints of what it means to be human, a return to a primal state of purity and simplicity.
And yet, for all the great illustrations of freedom and carefree living as a feathered sky-stormer, I know that no sooner had I settled down on the ground for my long awaited foraging and fat earthworm gorging than a shadow, would run over to me from nowhere, and my airy fable would come to a rapid and hairy end.🐤🐱
