ON my last visit to Chicago I was walking through a college campus, when I saw a museum piece in the compound. It was an ancient wagon, the type the first settlers in America used, when they crossed the continent with their families to settle on land thousands of miles away from home and the familiar. Most of us hate leaving the familiar, and because of this we are stuck in situations from where we could have gone and bettered ourselves. We don’t like leaving a familiar job, because we feel comfortable with the people we work with, and more so, we are afraid of how the new job will be. Once there was a king who received a gift of two magnificent falcons from Arabia. They were peregrine falcons, the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his head falconer to be trained.
Months passed and one day the head falconer informed the king that though one of the falcons was flying majestically, soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived.
The king thought to himself, “May be I need someone more familiar with the countryside to understand the nature of this problem.” So he cried out to his court, “Go and get a farmer.” In the morning, the king was thrilled to see the falcon soaring high above the palace gardens. He said to his court, “Bring me the doer of this miracle.” The court quickly located the farmer, who came and stood before the king. The king asked him, “How did you make the falcon fly?” With his head bowed, the farmer said to the king, “ It was very easy, your highness. I simply cut the branch where the bird was sitting.”
Many of us sit on our branches, clinging to the things that are familiar to us and because of that we never learn to fly and many possibilities remain undiscovered. We conform to the familiar, the comfortable, the mundane. So for the most part, our lives are mediocre instead of exciting, thrilling and fulfilling. Let us learn to destroy the branch of fear we cling to and free ourselves to the glory of flight. Fly free from the familiar, soar high into the unknown and feel the wind beneath your wings instead of the sand under your feet. But to fly and not walk, you need to leave the familiar..!
