As I looked up, my eyes followed the sound of a gaggle of geese just below the cloud line.

Their chatter was intense, and I watched while they kept their perfect formation as they passed. 

They were so purposeful in their instictively choreographed unity towards a shared destination. There was such an intrinsic beauty in their flight, and so I pondered how very similar we are to birds. 

Some of us fly instinctively, and others of us shun such ideas, and make our lives on the ground while watching others fly, and wishing we had the ability.

Some of us are flightless birds, and some of us are just afraid to fly.

But even flightless birds have wings.

You see, there is comfort in discomfort.

There is a sort of nesting that can occur once you put up the boundaries of your expectations and decide to only migrate within the limitations you have designated for yourself.

You look out through the barriers of your nest, up into the boundless sky, and yearn to spread your wings. You pine away for the wind to whisper to you, and for the voices deep inside of you to echo your desires, instead of your fears.

I wondered…….

What does a chicken see when watching a raven soaring above?

Does an ostrich envy a hawk?

When an eagle glides overhead, does a penguin watch longingly from his lowland perch?

I wondered if they have awareness that they are all kindred?

I wondered if they even know that they are all one and the same……..

I WAS that flightless bird, once upon a time, wondering what it might feel like to taste the sky.

But now, I was here, standing on a landing strip, in a flight suit, waiting to board a plane, that would land without me in it. 

A plane, that at 13,000 feet, would crack open its doors, and expel its hesitating cargo.

What the fruitcake have I gotten myself into? I was a flightless bird. I was an Ostrich. 

Wasn’t I supposed to be safely on the ground with my head in the sand? 

What on Earth had compelled me to defy the laws of gravity and test my very notions of sensibility?

Everything.

Everything that I had been through in the last two years leading up to this moment.

Everything that had brought me to this place, where I had no reason not to believe, and every reason to do it anyway. 

Sometimes when you are unsure of the usefulness your wings, employing the use of a parachute will have to do.

And every voice inside my head, up until now, had been telling me to retreat, that flightless birds do not fly.

As I boarded that plane, I looked back one last time, and I tried to memorize that feeling……..

That feeling you have when you know, without a doubt, that everything is about to change. 

That feeling that transforms you from the person that you once were, into the person you have now become. 

That moment, that a once flightless bird becomes a creature of the air.

As the doors closed, and the plane took off, I watched out of the window as everything got farther and farther away. 

And at 13,000 feet, when the doors opened,  I could finally feel the wind on my face. 

I noticed that off in the distance I could actually see the curvature of the Earth. 

A birds eye view of a once flightless bird, now ready to soar.

The wind howled and beckoned me forth out into the wild blue yonder. 

I took a deep breath, and through it all, I could still hear the faint voice in my head, whispering ever so softly….

But this time, instead of urging retreat,

it echoed a different message.

It said..

“Jump”.