Leaving the Nest
In the spring the bright-red robin returns to its nest to feed its young. The little birds open their mouths wide for the worm, crying out for nourishment.
Years ago a baby giraffe was born at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. I saw a video of the experience, a giant teardrop of bony legs falling to the ground. Within twenty-four hours the baby giraffe could stand.
A dear friend explained to me recently that we are not a single Self but many, and each requires care. But care by whom? Certainly the baby chicks cannot look after each other, and the giraffe must learn more than only how to walk in order to survive.
So there must be a parent in the room somewhere. An adult. And what makes an adult if not a lifetime of experience and wisdom?
Our Hearts are our adults, our parents. This isn’t mysticism. The Heart is the name we give to the Wise One in us, that part of ourselves that gets passed down fully-formed through the generations. Tell me, who taught those birds to open their mouths when the robin returned? Who showed the baby giraffe how to walk? Minds must learn. But the Heart already knows.
And so we find ourselves here: each of us a wise Heart (or, perhaps, several) tasked with raising our group of precocious Minds. Each of our Minds like a baby bird or giraffe, aware instinctively of some things but needing to learn others. Each Mind, each “self,” needing to be fed, needing to be taught, needing to be disciplined.
Our culture has largely missed the point here, it seems, with its preoccupation on Entertainment and Science. These are the words immature Minds might guess to be its goals, but they are wrong. Our Hearts know: not Entertainment but Playfulness, and not Science but Wonder. Baby Minds are easily distracted by each other and easily impressed by themselves, and so their focus becomes small, unsatisfying.
But mature Hearts know: we are here to play, together, in the ecstasy that surrounds us, and that ecstasy crosses-over through the generations.
Minds can find themselves stuck in the nest, afraid of falling out. But the parent knows: eat up, gain your strength, and one day you won’t fall. We will fly.