Freedom

Nature teaches us the best lessons. She sings her wisdom in birds’ songs. To sit outside and listen is often accompanied by many gifts and revelations.

The other day, I watched a little bird get stuck in a trampoline. She found herself surrounded by the netting, and flew from one side to the other in attempts to get free.

I could feel her sense of entrapment, all around her seemed to be walls. A quickening of my own heart accompanied her frantic hops from one wall to the next.

Yet, the trap she found herself in, was in fact, an illusion-

For this sweet little bird, being blessed by one of nature's most astounding adaptations, can fly. And while netting was all around her, above her remained the open sky.

After a few attempts, she remembered this ability, and flew straight up to freedom.

Reflecting, I found this a great metaphor of reason. Perhaps we humans, too, forget our own means of freedom. We entrap ourselves in the nets of our own making. Yet, amidst getting caught in our own snares, there remains an opening. 

The walls, the nets, the traps we build up around us are a perspective that can be shifted, changed, and rerendered. 

That you may turn in circles round and round,

Yet there is an opening atop your very crown-

An open sky, into which we too may fly.