"There is in every heart, a part that knows"
'Leading With Your Heart' songs/lyrics by Alan Bergman
Marilyn Bergman, Marvin Hamlisch
It's an osprey nest. Do you see it? Doesn't look like such a great location does it? Especially when I tell you that this bridge is on a highway that is a major truck route across north Georgia. The trucks hurtling past made getting up close to the bridge impossible. The noise, the exhaust. Even at night the enormous 'ruuussssshhht'
of the air sucking upward continues but now with headlights. When does it ever get quiet?
WHY did they decide to build their nest in such an inhospitable spot?
I've been back several times to check on them. As far I I know their nestlings fledged. I never saw evidence of any falling out or being lost. It could have happened. I don't know. But I have wondered what made them choose this site. You can be sure the day they picked it the trucks were lumbering by rattling the steel framework. Osprey's love to choose abandoned dead tree snags with a wide panorama for their nest sites. Was there something about the open steelwork of the bridge over the lake water that signaled it's suitability? I gave up wondering. There is no way of knowing. Something to them outweighed the noise and exhaust in value.
Making choices is essential to living. The ability to do so well is a sign of a successful adult. No matter what our degree of wealth or station, we like the animals around us, have to decide what we will eat, who we will mate with, how we will find a house, raise our children. It is not easy. It can be enormously complicated and I think despite the instinctively driven natural world, there are times even the birds and animals don't choose so wisely. Sooner or later we both, ospreys and humans, have to sort out the consequences-good and bad-- of our choices. If we are wise, we cherish the experiences created by our choices for the gift of discernment within them. We don't just deal with the consequences, we reflect a bit on what or how can be different going forward. We learn.
One of the more wrenching parts of parenting is allowing our children to fail. American baby boomers have been criticized for not allowing this to happen enough, for raising a generation of people who feel too 'entitled'. I don't know about that. I imagine on reflection there are some of those folks with us always. Being able to step back at certain points when our children are capable and ready to face the consequences of their decisions is the place parents earn the bags under their eyes, their grey hair and their children's respect. You have to eat your Wheaties everyday. But we do it because we know it is an essential rite of passage to adulthood. As we become adults, it is still one of the most wrenching parts of living. There are going to be things we do, choices we make, that do not work out. We are molded and burnished and chiseled by these experiences. Handling the consequences of all our choices builds confidence and self esteem. Sometimes the results, while painful, produce events that in the long run are beneficial. All this helps us believe in ourselves and our ability to make our way in this wondrously complex world. Those of us who say they didn't have a choice,or never learn to live with the results, will still be called to stand and deliver. There are no free passes. Moreover, while there is always a choice--it isn't written anywhere that we are going to always like the selections or that the people around us will always understand them. But we will always get to decide.
Which brings me back to the ospreys. It seems for all of us, there will also come those times in life when we will be called to make some hard choices those around us may not understand. The ability to do so may be finally, the greatest test of self hood. On reflection I wonder: when we find the courage and self love to stand alone with those choices we know are best for us, even while the trucks roar past below us sucking up the air, in order to honor the part of ourselves that says 'Yes, this is right for me", are we aligning the courses of our lives to their truth paths ? Are the hardest choices, the most essential? Could it be that the roots of regret only run down to those choices we made that did not honor this inner knowing?
Now I'm watching a pair of young squirrels. Their mouths are full of nesting materials and they are eagerly surveying what they consider to be a prime nesting site--right in the heart of a half fallen, easily accessible, dead tree....sigh.
What we strive for/in perfection/is not what turns us /into the lit angel/we desire,
What disturbs/and then nourishes/has everything we need.
David Whyte "The Winter of Listening"
of the air sucking upward continues but now with headlights. When does it ever get quiet?
WHY did they decide to build their nest in such an inhospitable spot?
I've been back several times to check on them. As far I I know their nestlings fledged. I never saw evidence of any falling out or being lost. It could have happened. I don't know. But I have wondered what made them choose this site. You can be sure the day they picked it the trucks were lumbering by rattling the steel framework. Osprey's love to choose abandoned dead tree snags with a wide panorama for their nest sites. Was there something about the open steelwork of the bridge over the lake water that signaled it's suitability? I gave up wondering. There is no way of knowing. Something to them outweighed the noise and exhaust in value.
Making choices is essential to living. The ability to do so well is a sign of a successful adult. No matter what our degree of wealth or station, we like the animals around us, have to decide what we will eat, who we will mate with, how we will find a house, raise our children. It is not easy. It can be enormously complicated and I think despite the instinctively driven natural world, there are times even the birds and animals don't choose so wisely. Sooner or later we both, ospreys and humans, have to sort out the consequences-good and bad-- of our choices. If we are wise, we cherish the experiences created by our choices for the gift of discernment within them. We don't just deal with the consequences, we reflect a bit on what or how can be different going forward. We learn.
One of the more wrenching parts of parenting is allowing our children to fail. American baby boomers have been criticized for not allowing this to happen enough, for raising a generation of people who feel too 'entitled'. I don't know about that. I imagine on reflection there are some of those folks with us always. Being able to step back at certain points when our children are capable and ready to face the consequences of their decisions is the place parents earn the bags under their eyes, their grey hair and their children's respect. You have to eat your Wheaties everyday. But we do it because we know it is an essential rite of passage to adulthood. As we become adults, it is still one of the most wrenching parts of living. There are going to be things we do, choices we make, that do not work out. We are molded and burnished and chiseled by these experiences. Handling the consequences of all our choices builds confidence and self esteem. Sometimes the results, while painful, produce events that in the long run are beneficial. All this helps us believe in ourselves and our ability to make our way in this wondrously complex world. Those of us who say they didn't have a choice,or never learn to live with the results, will still be called to stand and deliver. There are no free passes. Moreover, while there is always a choice--it isn't written anywhere that we are going to always like the selections or that the people around us will always understand them. But we will always get to decide.
Which brings me back to the ospreys. It seems for all of us, there will also come those times in life when we will be called to make some hard choices those around us may not understand. The ability to do so may be finally, the greatest test of self hood. On reflection I wonder: when we find the courage and self love to stand alone with those choices we know are best for us, even while the trucks roar past below us sucking up the air, in order to honor the part of ourselves that says 'Yes, this is right for me", are we aligning the courses of our lives to their truth paths ? Are the hardest choices, the most essential? Could it be that the roots of regret only run down to those choices we made that did not honor this inner knowing?
Now I'm watching a pair of young squirrels. Their mouths are full of nesting materials and they are eagerly surveying what they consider to be a prime nesting site--right in the heart of a half fallen, easily accessible, dead tree....sigh.
What we strive for/in perfection/is not what turns us /into the lit angel/we desire,
What disturbs/and then nourishes/has everything we need.
David Whyte "The Winter of Listening"
No comments:
Post a Comment