Be Like the Bird!

In our kitchen there is a chalkboard that hangs above the sink. It's slightly too far up the wall for messages and doodles to be a frequent affair, so whatever does end up in chalk tends to be intentional and long-term. For a while we had 'Make Tea Not War' and then we had the top three-winning sentences from a game of Cards Against Humanity, with a little box in the corner to mark the progress of, what is becoming a rather drawn-out, game of Assassins. At the moment it is a seemingly avant-garde interpretation of a Gambian landscape left-over from our Murder Mystery Party a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, back to my point. The message that stayed up the longest was a little life-motto of ours:

Be like the bird before it hits the window...

Admittedly, it is a little morbid, but no one says that the bird dies in the process! Most birds that hit windows tend to be stunned for a moment before picking themselves up and flying away again. Before hitting the window the bird is really going for it. It has gumption. Then, when it hits a dead-end it just gets up and flies in another direction. It's a rather tenuous link, but I know a lot of people, including myself, who can relate to this. We're all working flat-out towards what seems to be a never ending horizon of possibility. I for one have no definite plans after finishing my degree; I have hopes and dreams and possibilities, but nothing set in stone. Sometimes it feels like I'm working hard for nothing, that everything will suddenly disintegrate and I will hurl headlong into a dead end. But I'm trying to be like the bird; focused, full of gumption and ready to change direction if things turn out differently.