Birds... an apology

A few days back I wrote about the robins nesting right next to the backdoor of my house. At the time I thought they’d been spooked by all the activity and left. It turns out I was wrong. I’d made some comments about how, they, like us, tend to keep on doing things as always in the face of change, and how that may not be a good idea.

Well, it seems the robins haven’t left. The hen is sitting on the eggs, today, and every so often the male appears and they trade places. What astonishes me is the way these birds remain almost motionless for hours at a time, keeping those eggs warm.

And so, it seems, they are there to teach me another lesson, one that has to do with patience.

So often we want things and we want them right away. We do a few things in our lives and expect that complete transformations will follow. The robins know better. They know that those eggs will hatch in their own sweet time and they can’t be hurried. They also know that when the chicks arrive it’ll be a lot of hard work before they’re ready to try flying. It won’t happen according to a schedule, but according to its own rhythms.

If only some of the parents I come across could do the same thing for their children. Instead they invest in early learning programs for the kids’ computers, they push them into accelerated programs, and force them to perform in every conceivable way as soon as possible. The neurotic parent’s need to have a high achieving kid is the norm, now, in some school systems, and the children are over-controlled, over-scheduled, and over-tired. And they wonder why the resulting adult is apathetic and clueless….

It’s time to listen to the natural processes, not the ones on the spreadsheets. The robins really do have a message for us.