I will use this forum to go deeper into one of my old passions: birds!
When I was 12 years old I started, more as a coincidence, with bird watching. Armed
with a small binocular and a bird guide, I started searching with some friends
for normal bird species, like the Chiffchaff, the Chaffinch and the Kestrel. It
was in a way adventurous for a twelve year old kid away alone and most
importantly it was a good time with my friends. But quite fast a “factor” competition
came in, as it became the search for rare birds. Probably you think now that the
only rare bird in this story is myself, but you could be mistaken. Bird
watching is much more practiced then you probably imagine: This rare bird
watching e.g. has its own English word: “Twitching”. And there is a Hollywood
film about it: “The big year”. Although it
has little change to become Olympic, some even call it a sport. But my attempts
were more modest and relaxed. At the end, I had on my list species like
Fan-tailed Warbler, Lesser White-fronted Goose and the incredible Two-barred
Crossbill. Now you are really impressed, no?
Anyway, one thing I liked about birds was the fact that they are so
divers; you had of all kinds. And in that sense, they are just like humans. In
the rest of my speech I will talk about two bird species and what we can learn
from them. The first one illustrates that we are all chicken if it comes down
to handle changes and the second one will show that we are also capable to do
the opposite.
But first the chicken! We have at home 2 chicken. Great animals: eating
all your left-overs, keeping some space herbs-free and giving eggs! Some week
ago, I had a problem: the eggs were destroyed every day again. But how did this
happen? After a remarkable piece of detective work, I found out that a Magpie,
the king of thieves under the birds came in the henhouse and ate the eggs. As a
handy handyman as I am, I attached some Plexiglas strips before the entrance of
the henhouse. It worked: no more Magpie. One problem: also no more chicken
going in the henhouse. At the hour that the chicken normally go into their
house, I went outside. One of them was totally “freeking” out and running
around like a chicken without a head, as we say in Dutch. And the other one, I
could not find directly. Finally, I saw the bum of the missing chicken sticking
out of some bushes, as it had isolated itself from the world by putting its
head in some green. Hilarious how the world of these chicken tumbled down just
by 3 Plexiglas strips. And probably we are not scared of Plexiglas, but if we
are honest, aren’t we all a little bit like these chicken when it concerns changes?
We are all paralyzed when it comes down to big changes, especially if they are
long-term or contain a proportion of uncertainty. We stick e.g. too long to our
job, because we are scared of the unknown in a possible new opportunity?
But then there is this second bird and he or she will fly in the story
soon. But first I have to put on my running shoes and go out for a tour. And I
am lucky, close to my home, I have a nice piece of nature where I love to go
jogging. Some months ago, I did my normal tour until I saw a Buzzard, a medium
to large bird of prey, landing very close to me on a branch of a tree.
Fantastic, I could see clearly its yellow claws and its sharp beak, bringing back
all the old memories from my bird watching period. I continued running. But suddenly,
I got hit on the head, rather hard. It was that Buzzard that attacked me from
the back. I did not have any injuries, but it was quite a surprise: the birder
taking by the bird. Later on the internet, I found out that other people, often
joggers or bikers, got injured rather severely. But where did this small
Buzzard get the courage to attack a relative big and dangerous creature as me?
One word: passion! Probably, the Buzzard has a nest in the neighbourhood and
this passion, this higher purpose, makes him or her take bold actions in their
changing environment. You can see similar things with e.g. swans.
So to conclude: What can we learn from these two birds? Well, when it
comes down to important personal choices or to global changes our society is
facing, it is really up to us to make the choice. Do we want to be the Chicken
or the Buzzard? Are we willing to get out of our comfort zone or do we bury our
head in the sand like an Ostrich? All too often we hang onto our stones, while
the universe is throwing us diamonds. And the magic spell to mutate from a
chicken into a majestic Buzzard is passion! Cultivate this “grinta” and major
things will await us.
