Let’s learn from the Bird

Dr. Vijay Bhushan

Faculty of English, Arts & Humanities Dept., Kalinga University

Village – Kotni, Atal Nagar, Chhattisgarh 492010

Mobile – 78039-44222, E-mail – vijay.bhushan@kalingauniversity.ac.in

I have long lived my personal, social, professional life and superficially seen the political life from outside. Including me I have not seen anyone who is not overburdened or stressed in their life either for personal, social, professional or political reasons. Struggle for survival is true and can be directly proportional to the stress. But the matter of prime concern is that are we all struggling in our lives?  Does every individual struggle throughout his or her life? Right from birth up till death don’t we have any life period where we don’t have to fight with the stress?

When I evoke my childhood memories it is chock-full of tensions. My parents and siblings were continuously behind me to control me as per their wishes may be for my safety motives. If I would do something which could harm me then they would stop me. Out of my inquisitiveness if I would retry it again then only bang used to be the solution. That was really very stressful. At that point of time neither I was having any tension of bread and butter nor was I bothered for any job yet my life was always nerve-wracking. As I entered my school my life it was just like a nightmare. Learning, studying, acquiring knowledge, etc. were only the generic terms for me and punishments, impositions and ruthless beating by most of the teachers used to be the focal and foremost routine of my school days, despite being the best student of the school. School’s environment made my life hell and stressful. Undeniably the scenario wasn’t different for my other classmates.

Correspondingly the level of tension kept on increasing with every passing year. Higher studies, Career, job, housing, resource management, marriage, family planning weren’t be the tension free affairs. Tension, stress, pressure, anxiety, tragedies, mishaps, failures, etc had exhaustively frustrated me beyond my threshold limit. Ultimately the reward was high BP, insomnia, partial demensia like condition, irritation and all the related side effects were clearly pertinent in my health and behavior. There was no control Z or undo option in life like computer. Thus life compelled me to live in that morass only. I always had a passionate yearning to come out of it.

One Sunday I woke up without the aggravations of rushing to the office. Quietly I sat near the window with acute lethargy. It was a broiling and sultry summer morning. My garden was pleasantly watered due to which small pits and pockets of soil retained water in it. All the leaves were adoring the water droplets. Because of cool environment, shade and flowers, the garden was idyllic with lots of birds chirping happily, butterflies dangling around the inflorescences and few honey bees too were sagging. Despite the scorching heat all were so happy in the garden.

It gave me an insight that why are they looking so happy to me? Pondering deep into my stream of consciousness I realized that they are living their present, they all are living for themselves, they all are busy in their own businesses and are not poking their nose in other’s business. Rather others are not poking their nose in their business that’s why they are enjoying their quality time. I wished that if this could have happened in my life too then I too could have led a peaceful life. But in reality it is not happening as we serve others for earning our bread and butter: fulfill their aspiration and dreams; and meet out their business goals. Our employers suck us so badly that we are not left with any energy in the body. They squeeze our brain so shrewdly such that an individual is not left with any enthusiasm to do anything else. But how long this journey will go on? Will there be any end to this journey? I was very deeply swinging high and low in my thoughts then suddenly one bird came hovering and took a pew on the rod of my window. Briskly I came out of my stream of consciousness and arose back into my conscious world. That small bird wedged my attention and I indolently started observing its activity.

Within no time I found one of the prevalent lesson of my life. The bird’s movement was so simple and the strategy was very impeccable. The bird flapped its wings with an up & down gesticulation. This thrusts the bird to move forward. The complete wingspan was put at the right angle of bout, which means the wings had to kink with each descending stroke to keep aligned with the route of travel. For every move the bird would jerk off its wings vigorously so that it can shed all the water droplets, dust or any other unsolicited specks from its body. It would prepare its body before every flight. This act helped the bird to take higher and better stride every time. Thus it attracted me so very much why aren’t we human beings take this lesson from the birds. Why are we carrying all the past tensions of each and every act of life in our heart and mind? Why aren’t we shrieking it off then and there itself?  I realized that the day we will start abiding with this strategy our mind will be very calm and our soul will be relaxed. Our heart will be free of tension. With light heart and mind we can take a higher and higher stride in our life. Lighter would be the mind, higher would be the stride. So my dear readers lets us start to shirk off all the unwanted worries in life and start ascending higher and higher in your personal, social and professional life.