A Bird in a Hurricane

As I step outside my cabin door, the tempest that is hurricane Milton’s wind batters my face and makes me squint. The trees creak with their blowing sway, and I imagine them singing to one another, “hold on, it will all be over soon.” The sky is black, and the clouds move swiftly across the canopy as if in a rush to get this all over with. But even with the bleakness and the oncoming devastation, above my head there is a bird. A white bird, small and compact, flying towards the coast with his yellow beak to the wind and his wings stretched as wide as they will go. The little bird flaps and inches forward, but as soon as he stops the wind carries him back to where he was. He soars not on his own volition, but on nature’s command. As hard as he tries to go forward, he can’t. He is not big enough, not strong enough. His determination is there, but his willpower is surpassed by the inevitability of the indifference of the storm. After watching him for a while through his struggles, small victories of feet and disappointing backtracking, the bird eventually gives up, resigned to where he is. He flys down to a large branch and braces his talons on the bark, knowing it is not him, but forces out of his control.

I speak to many people in my job and life and I always hear when I ask people what they want they say, “I want to have a good life.” This is many people’s driving force of their words and actions. It determines their vote, their love, their job, and everything else. But this very colloquial phrase has always confused me. How do they know what that is? I would think. What is good to them? When does it go from bad to good, or even bad to average? What defining moment, achievement, item, or person makes it a “good life.” Would the bird be considered to have a bad life because external nature prevented him from flying where he wanted? Or does he have a good life because he has the character to even try?

A cup of coffee on a sunny and brisk morning, singing and playing guitar on the grass with my dog makes me think I live a good life. Tax filing makes me think things are always going wrong. A call from someone who tells me they love me makes me think everything is okay. A realization I acted selfishly makes me think I always mess things up. It is funny how these things all add up and define hours, days, weeks, and years. Enough of the good ones and we feel life is incredible. Too many of the bad ones give us the impression of failure. The “good life” is all about your own viewing of every experience in your life that transpires. You can live the good life every day if you believe you do and move forward with that same outlook. We all like to think we are the bird trying his best to soar and triumph over the storm, but maybe we are the storm. Perhaps our ideas of what is supposed to happen are the stopgaps to flight. We imagine if we just get this thing, this date, this money, this message, all will finally settle in its place. But we are never satisfied and we are never perfect, and no matter what we get we are always wanting something new.

Maybe these things in life that happen are not good or bad, they just are. It is what life is, the concoction of all events that make it. If you expect it to always be good, you will be sadly disappointed, and if you suspect it never amounts to anything and is worthless, then the beautiful miracles of existence will be completely lost on you. Life happens as it will, and all events of yesterday shape today, and today, tomorrow. Don’t look at the future of your life as singular pictures of tranquility that gives it its defining mode, and don’t imagine significant vignettes of misery as its thesis, but rather that all that has, is, and will be is simply your existence, and that is okay. Your expectations will drive you mad, and will have you constantly comparing yourself to all others.

Nobody has it all figured out, least of all me. But I suppose that the bird’s life is good, because he tried. Life is good if your mindset says it is, and your outlook can make a devastation into a beautiful experience of learning and newfound knowledge. Tragedy will happen, but without the ability to risk and frame your mindset you are merely a robot. Beautiful triumphs and miraculous defeats versus mundane mediocrity and societal expectations: So, which do you choose reader?

-Will Witt