Birds of Paradise.

The natural way.

A recent blogger said she was tired of waking up to the litany of gloom and doom economic news but instead has been taking refuge in the simple recognition of migrating birds. I find this perspective refreshing. 

It’s so very easy to fall into a reactionary mindset of what comes our way. On the one hand who can deny the harsh result of billions (if not trillions) of dollars being drained away reacting to one crisis after another— that we create? Lives are being destroyed. On the other hand, all is well. How is it possible that such polar opposites could co-exist? Without diminishing broad-spread mortal suffering I would like to provide some insight.

Birds fly south when they deem a changing of the season, and north when it goes the other way. They do this without recognition of economic news either good or bad. Migration has been happening since the dawn of time. Animals and people move when necessary. It’s a natural way. 

This natural way puts the expression “bird brain” in the most different light. The unnatural way is to first create conditions that prompt a survival mode to move (e.g., wars, violence, the devastation of means to exist such as global warming, withdrawal of support to nations that won’t do things our way, trade wars that destroy jobs—on both sides) and then build walls to stop the natural way to move. 

A dog will not live in the same space where they defecate, yet we humans seem determined to so destroy our habitat it is turning into much the same thing. There are times when it seems we humans are the most brutal and stupid of all creatures! 

Every day the sun rises and sets without consulting our opinions, judgments, or the news. And it’s a good thing. Think about what would happen if this was not so. Maybe the sun would rise (or not) dependent upon our mood that day. Maybe birds would fly south, or not, dependent upon economic ups and downs. If life depended, we’d all be in deep trouble since we never seem to agree on anything. We are enslaved by our differences and the results of those enslavements. We are attached to the way things should be and ignore the way they are and that creates very big difficulties.

Where is it written that the stock market always moves upward? Who says that goodness is perpetually inevitable? Where is it written that those we love will always move in directions we think they should? That one vector continues without fail? These fixed ideas (and our attachment to them) is what creates euphoria and fear, which in turn creates the ups and downs. Life is change. Birds know this and we don’t. There is a season for flying south and another for flying north. Seasons change and we need to adapt. Yet we don’t. Why?

The answer is ego possessiveness and attachment (to what we desire) and resistance (to what we repudiate). We go by way of what we see and ignore what we can’t. Birds don’t do that but we do. What we see is either beautiful or ugly (on the surface) and we respond to such appearances. If we were wise we’d notice that even our own forms are in the process of decay but our true nature is eternal. 

The truth is that there was a time when I was a mortally handsome fellow and now I’m just a decaying and wrinkled bag of bones. Does it matter? Not a whit! Nobody gets out of here mortally alive anyway. It happens to us all. What can be seen will always fade but what is eternal and immortal never fades. Paradise is either here and now, or it isn’t. It all depends, mortally. And it doesn’t, immortally.