If I know – and I do – that others are doing the best they can, and that is not only enough, but good, who am I to hold myself to a higher standard?

I turned fifty a month ago, and used the occasion as an excuse to try and figure myself out.  I knew it was time to really inquire within, get honest, and face whatever truth I had been avoiding.  Surely I had been doing something wrong, otherwise I would have dreams and desires that I could articulate – wishes and wants that I could focus upon and make real.

I decided that if I removed distractions, placed myself in a state of awareness, and consciously set my intention: wisdom would come.  So I went into a convent for a week – an amazing experience – but that is a story for another time.  And at the end of the week I was no smarter than I was before – just more frustrated, because my plan had failed.

Three weeks later I started to want to know again.  I had accepted that my retreat had induced a lingering sense of disconnection with my everyday world, but that was fine.  And that the real point of creating time to be still might simply be to be still, was good too.  But, after all, I am 50 now, and surely it is time to know what I want? Besides, I am actually feeling that I would like to be more – be bigger – but how?

I ask my coach for help.  We both sense that the answer is inside of me; I just need to get it out.  Maybe – since I trust her – if she asks me what I want often enough, I’ll find out what it is.   I have heard that this method works very well; it is truly a great plan, and my coach executes her part of it brilliantly – cocking her head and pecking away with varied inflections and continued enthusiasm for the results.  And at the end of it I feel that I don’t know anything I didn’t know before, although I had actually expressed a few truths, which gave me a sense of virtue.

A few hours later I begin to feel fussy, and then sad, and then a sort of despair.  You see, there was nothing in those wants I had vocalized that I felt excited about, there was nothing solid for me to sink my teeth into and go after with relish, and the only thing that felt revelatory also felt out of my access.  I was angry, and confused, and hurt.  It was the next day that I finally became aware of the gift of birds.

In the morning, my usual schedule had been delayed, so I had time to spend crying in bed, and when I finally left the house it was fully light out.  There are trees that line one side of our driveway, and in one of them was a woodpecker.  It wasn’t one of the little woodpeckers that sometimes are darting here and there, and it wasn’t a grand pileated woodpecker – though I have seen those too – this seemed like a generic, or classic woodpecker – woodpecker essence, as it were, pecking assiduously and wearing a red hat.  My coach is a woodpecker, and it felt good to know she was there, committed as woodpeckers are, to uncovering the choicest morsels in the tree.  Seeing her helped me feel that I was not alone, and that I could relax.

Continuing on my route, I came to the highway, where there were streetlights – now unlit – tall poles, each with a curving neck and a lamp.  On one a hawk was perched – still and intent, watching everything.  There were many hawks at the convent, sitting in the tall oaks, occasionally swooping with a grand flurry to exchange their view of the Virgin Mary for one of Saint Francis.  I know people who see hawks in flight, but I almost always see them poised and alert with their sharp beaks and sharp eyes.  Hawks are powerful with knowing, and whenever I see one I feel special.

And then, on the curve of the next streetlight on the road, was a group of smaller birds.  They might have been pigeons, or some dove-like creature, but I think they were smaller than that – sparrows, maybe.  There was a long row of them, pressed each next to the other, aware – or not – that they might be a tasty treat for their hawk neighbor.  Was there safety in numbers? Or just warmth and the comfort of companionship?  Or does warmth and companionship create feelings of comfort and safety?

At the gym, on the treadmill, I saw a couple pairs of geese swimming in the duck pond.  The fountains have been turned off for the winter, and their places marked with empty white plastic bottles.  In the summer – with the fountains running – there are many geese and even ducks in the duck pond.  And in spring, when the parents parade their new babies, the young ones like to play in that strange space where they can choose to be rained upon, or not.

But now, the pond is covered mainly with leaves, and the geese serenely create pathways through them – from force of habit if for no other reason.  As quickly as the geese clear the water it is filled again with yellows and oranges and browns and some green, but the clearing was there, and the covering is different than it was before.  I know that with time, and after a period of ice, the water will be clear again.

There is a point on my route where a small river enters Long Island Sound, and the highway becomes a bridge.  Often there are seagulls there, as there were that day.  Seagulls sometimes sit on the streetlights, too, but just then they were riding the currents of air.  There are certainly times when they are birds with a clear purpose – usually food – but that afternoon the seagulls were gliding and drifting, letting the wind take them wherever, maybe resting in the ease of not knowing, and enjoying the touch of the sun on their wings.

I pulled back into my driveway late afternoon and sat in my car feeling the weight of a thousand pounds – much of it in my chest.  Even though I had been given so many gifts, I had failed to recognize them.  But I like to sit in my car in my driveway; it is quiet, there is nothing to do, and once I saw a fox.

Slowly, I became aware of a tremendous sound of chirping, and I could see the tree in front of me filling up with birds.  It was too dark to see many details about the birds (and my eyes, now that I am 50, do not provide as much information as they used to) – they seemed to be about the size of a robin, but dark.  Their chirping was a nice sound – not sharp or creaky.  I choose to think they were not starlings.

Have you ever seen – usually in spring or fall – one of those huge flocks of birds that seem to out of nowhere suddenly swoop and swirl up the horizon?  The sky becomes filled with birds as if wearing a patterned scarf waving in celebration.  The birds don’t collide with each other; they are a mass single-minded consciousness, and to witness their flight is to experience magic.

Well, a small flock of those birds – maybe a few hundred – came and settled in the tree (and its neighbors) in front of me as I sat in the driveway feeling weary and confused.  I wanted pictures, and got out of my car concerned both that I would startle the birds, and that I’d get covered in poop.  Neither the birds, nor I, were disturbed.

Whenever I see such a flock I wonder how it comes about?  How do the birds decide when to meet and where to go?  How do they keep together?  How do they know everyone’s there?  Why the journey?  Do they know?  Do we think we know?

The song of the birds made my lungs expand and I could take a deep breath.  The trees continued to fill as the rush of birds became less, and then in an instant they were in flight again and the whoosh of their wings joined with their song to make a glorious sound.

Strangely soothed, and comforted by the beauty and magnitude of something that I did not understand and yet was a part of, I went inside to the cat, whose view of birds is rather different than mine.