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 believe that all that is is connected, because we all came from some fundamental source – call it a Big Bang, or God, or Universe, or that which has no name:  Source.  And I believe that our natural state, our core, is one of joy and well-being, and that there is great beauty in all things – though I may not always be able to see it – because we are all derived from the same Source.  If there is beauty anywhere, there is beauty everywhere.

Certainly, there is beauty in birds, and none of the birds I had seen seemed to be lacking in any way.

I thought of that huge flock  that had visited my tree.  Had they spent hours self-coaching to arrive at the intention of being in my driveway at 4:15 in the afternoon that day?  Simultaneously?  Was it their purpose to move in great swooping flocks that way?  Was the magic of their journey negated if they hadn’t done it consciously?

I have heard that human brains can, basically, do a lot more than bird brains.  But if the choice is between using my brain to create a state of anguish for myself, and soaring through the air, the big brain doesn’t seem like so much of an asset.  Maybe, just maybe, if birds can create the kind of magic I had witnessed without conscious intent – and I know I am assuming here since I really know little of avian affairs – maybe I would be okay not knowing what I really want.  This was the thought that had come to me:  why do I have to try to be more than a bird – especially when a bird is so beautiful exactly as it is.

And I thought of people that I know – of my clients, and others.  And of how amazingly beautiful they are in the intricacies of their struggles and their growth.  How endlessly fascinating and detailed we are as individuals, and as a species.

Have you ever spent a few minutes studying a single leaf?  Getting lost in the color and the texture and the delicate veining and the symmetry – or lack thereof?  And then looked up and around to see how many other leaves – all equally magnificent – are visible just from your particular spot?  And thought, “never have trees had quite so many leaves,” because surely there is an infinity of leaves and what is miraculous is that you are connected to each and every one?

And then think of how much more there is to easily notice about a person, and then how much more there is unknown.  The wonder of it makes you weep – at least it does me.

I am part of all that, I know it.  And so who am I to think that I should be somehow something more?  And who am I to think that I am somehow not enough?  If everyone else is “all that” – and they are – I must be too, and it’s time for me to start acting that way.

At age 50, and thanks to birds, I am finally really learning about loving myself.

One thing I’m doing is getting rid of all of my conditions – all the you’ll be “good ifs” and “good whens” – and that’s tricky, because I don’t know what they all are.  What I do know, though, is how I feel when I run up against one of them:  cold and small and unhappy and irritable and despairing and in anguish.  Any of those conditions – singly or together – is a sign that I’m not looking at myself with love.   Or as Abraham Hicks would say, that I’m not looking at myself, “through the eyes of source.”

The first condition I’m discarding is a big one, and it’s something I’ve been carrying around with me since I was a little girl – it’s the need to find the right thing to do, which I had internalized to mean knowing, also, who I am.

I’m not going to ask myself those questions anymore:  “What do I want?”  “What are my goals?”  “What are my wildly improbable dreams?”  I know I have wants, and goals, and hopes, but frankly I haven’t earned my own trust yet to be given the answers.  I’ve been imposing too many conditions on myself to be trusted.  No more fighting with myself about it.

And besides, I have a sense of who I am, I’m part of everything there is:  the dust in the sunlight, the webbing of the spider, the leaves on the trees, and the crap of the birds.  And I have everything else the birds have shown me:  the support of the woodpecker, the sharp knowing of the hawk, the warmth and companionship of the little birds, the forward motion of the geese, the ease of the seagulls, and the magic of the flock.  With all this it is more than enough to simply be, there is no need to know.

*            *            *

The next morning, as I was driving along, processing my revelations, I was thinking about my father.  He would have been 79 that day, and he had died – that day – 24 years ago.

I was thinking about how much I had grown in the past few years, and how thrilled and excited and interested he would have been about every baby step of my development.

I wasn’t thinking about how he had taught me about conditional love, and about keeping things hidden; I was thinking about how much we would have to talk about, and about how very very much he had loved me, and about how much I still loved him.

is not easy to drive with tear-filled eyes, so it is good that just at that moment an enormous flock of birds – easily 10 times bigger than the one from the other night – thousands and thousands of birds, swept suddenly across the sky.  So very many birds.

And with the birds my father said to me, “I will show you that I love you still, as I always have, with this infinity of birds.  That is who you are, just as you are also a single feather and that speckled pebble you picked up the other day.  What more do you need to know?  Those are all your wings, and you are flying.  You will always be my little bird, as well as your own huge flock.”

So, when and if it is time for me to soar, I will do so.  A bird is no less a bird when not in flight.