Seated in my half-lit bedroom, the lights are out, and my laptop is off; this place offers me peace when the noise outside is too loud. Or when I want to plug my earphones and play the same song repeatedly until I am done with beating myself up for the mistakes I’ve made. When my pen and paper are too scratched to hold my scars. My window pane is open, and today a different kind of bird flies by. All the others that come to this pane are victims of nature as they cannot see through the clear glass, and attempts of flying through fail as they hit the pane, and the struggle comes to a halt when they find giving up necessary.
By victims of nature, it’s a nature that I’ve made, the walls I’ve built up there. A nature that I had allowed to creep in and like algae has developed, and roots had sunk deep. When I am injured, I mean when I do something against what I’ve been taught to believe. When I fail, when I feel too messed up for the world, I’m injured. I try to fight it, but the endless fight seems to end in hopelessness and self-blame; that strikes frequent thoughts about our position with some circumstances.
But this one is the lucky type as it finds the pane wide open to swing by and get a view of the room. I am lost in the other rooms of my house (thoughts). Although my earphones are still plugged and the volume quite high, my mind is out on a long stroll hiking about the plans I have for my disguised future.
I am invited back to reality by the bird’s landing on the window’s frame. I remove my earphones and notice a different kind of rhythm from the common one from the bird. Before anything else, the habit of naming everything that I come across takes over, and I call the bird ‘J’ what might sound like Jay? Amidst all these, I notice a broken wing.
A bird with a broken wing is an actor with no stage or a writer without words or a song with no beats. ‘J’ meant joy for me; the broken wing represented my lost joy in the world’s struggles. I take the bird in my arms; it’s quite small but not small to get lost in my palm. Like I had learnt from the movies, I bandage it and place it on my study table. After some days, the wing was well, and ‘jay’ was flying around. It flew about my head laid waste on me several times. I had nothing to lose but much to gain; Jay had taught me a lifelong lesson that would take me time to absorb from the world on my own.
We are not affected differently by the forces of nature beyond our reach. Though Jay was lucky to find the pane open, she chose to stand on the framework. She chose to calm after the storms had subsided, like any bird she would have flown in to get a view of the room or whatever birds fly in to do. I can say she felt the need to sit aside and heal from the turbulence of her life. She did not choose to be injured, but she had to heal before life had to take its course. Ever wondered why every game has breaks in between, why every interesting series has a break between the first release and the prior ones.
If a movie is released earlier than it ought to be the fans, don’t take that well. And just like you; you ought to relax and feel the ocean you are in calm its storms before you serge at it with all you have. Mistakes are part of life and should not put you down. Take time to relax, and the world won’t end if you do. Sit by yourself and smile to yourself. Take time to love yourself and be with you, know yourself, and let that carry you around for a while. Felicitate yourself for the plus ones and the negatives; don’t try to kill yourself over them.
Its nature that we don’t get it right at first that an attempt might fail and impending success is too blurred and might not get to you soon but trust me, a break from it all will do. Take time to heal and sit by the shore of whatever sea you were thrown away from; run away if you must but don’t beat yourself for things beyond your prowess.
I love it