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Free Bird

'Icarus', the mention of his name invokes in my mind the image of a man who tried to be a bird and failed. The story that I have heard about him end with his falling down to earth for venturing too close to the sun and thus, melting the wax that held the feathers in his wings together.

The flights of birds have always fascinated me and I am sure that I am not the only one who has looked at awe, the eagles as they skim the convection currents. It must be an experience indeed to have 'the gift of wings', if I may borrow the phrase from Richard Bach.

It was while listening to Lynard Skynard's 'Free Bird' that my I thought about my own desire at times to be as free as a bird and thought about writing about it. I had the lyrics before me but I needed much more than that to set me on my way. I then decided to take help from Richard Bach knowing that he primarily based his writings on flight of birds and men and drew parallels from them.

'Jonathan Livingstone Seagull' was the book I picked up and reading the dedication itself on the first page made me feel that I had indeed picked up the right inspiration for what I was about to write. It is dedicated to 'me', the reader, the real Jonathan Seagull who lived within me and everyone else. Jonathan is a bird, a seagull and yes, each of us have him within us.

Jonathan is an ordinary seagull but one who is not satisfied just being alive for the sake of living. He knows that there is more to living and flying than just eating to live and living to eat. He thus dares to be different and wants to fly not because looking for food forces him to fly but because 'he loves to fly'.

Being a bird, he was as such free before my eyes but as I read on I realized that the fact that he had wings and could fly did not set him free. It was his desire to find a meaning, a higher purpose for his life that set him free - 'a reason to live - to learn, to discover, to be free!"

To be free in the same way as Jonathan may have its perils. Jonathan too, in the story is cast out by the other seagulls for daring to be different but the discoveries that he makes later reduces all the other seagulls to being stuck to the ground, flying for food, fighting for food, for survival while he soars high above them all.

If we turn our pages and look back at our past, we've had our share of Jonathans, those who have dared to think and be different and similarly their lives too have been equally perilous before the eyes of others. Whether it be Socrates, Galileo or Darwin, they have been condemned for trying to be free, for thinking different and for being different but they have been right all along.

'Icarus' wanted to fly and in trying to do so, he fell. But in longing to fly and in trying to fly, he rose way above all the people around him. He was different and he was free, as free as a bird!

- Wave, February, 2001

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I am perfect in imperfection!

I am not perfect and I never will be!

What would perfection be? Without any flaws I guess.

Now, if I were the sole inhabitant on this earth, would I be perfect? Yes, I would be, without any benchmarks on me that would rate me as imperfect.

My physical attributes, my traits, in fact everything about me is perfect in isolation. I may stammer, I may limp, I may be anything but I am perfection as myself, I am the perfect me.

My speech becomes a stammer when I try to emulate your speech, my gait becomes a limp when I try and walk like you and I become imperfect when I want to be as perfect as you.

I am imperfect as you but I am perfect as I am.

- Wave, February, 2001

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