Do not try to predefine understanding, and do not make a principle out of non-understanding.

YUNG-AN

I took a few minutes ...

Just by chance; on the first day of the New Year I was walking outside at sunrise, just as the birds began to stir. There was a stiff wind blowing at the time, which caused some interesting challenges to the birds attempting flight.

First I noticed the crows as their wings flapped at a frantic rate to make any headway against the wind. For a brief moment of time one crow was motionless, hanging in the air in front of me, his flight speed matching the wind speed so he neither moved forward nor backward but just hung in place. As the wind began to push him and other crows backwards they peeled to the side, much like Second World War fighters in the movies, diving for a place to land. Following one pair as they sought to land drew my eyes to a flight of starlings.

The starlings presented a quite different picture. They were much higher in the air and attempting to fly in the V formation we associate with migrating ducks. At the moment they caught my eye they were grouped into a large V and a smaller V. Not for long. Picture a length of rope with one end loose and the other end in your hand. When you flick the rope a hump forms and flows along the rope to the end. That was what the starling flight looked like, a line undulating across the sky. When it reached the end of the line of birds a few would appear to have been flicked away, peeling off from the formation a away as the wind pushed them. I stood there just watching this flight of birds just weave its’ way across the sky.

It was not long ago I would merely have glanced at the first birds, then hurried on my way with my mind worrying over all kinds of different things, whether I could control these things or not. So it seems a good way to start the New Year – standing there totally relaxed, completely in the moment, having let everything else go and totally enjoying a sight as simple as birds flying into a stiff wind.

Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the roses.