The soul is a bird that flies to paradise.
Sometimes I look outside and see the birds flying and just wonder how it must feel.To feel the wind beneath your wings and feel on top of everything. To feel in control. To be close to the sunrise every morning that you could paint it with all the colors engraved in your memory. To be so close to the earth and yet so far away. I think of both birds and souls as elusive, graceful, beautiful, and unfettered. I consider our souls the best part of us and birds the most enviable living things. We say we want to be as free as a bird, fly with eagles, spread our wings, soar, and explore the great unknown. Our souls weren’t meant to be caged, they were meant to be free. Freedom.
Imagine with me. Imagine you have a beautiful bird. Let’s say a peacock or a parrot. A bird designed to be free and in the wilderness and yet you cage this bird for your satisfaction. You sip your coffee every morning and gaze at your bird and pat yourself on the back for capturing this beautiful bird. But after some time, the bird doesn’t seem happy and one day it hits you, this is not the bird’s home. So you decide to let it go. You open the cage, leave the window, and leave for work knowing that once you return, the cage will be empty. You come back from a long day’s work only to find the bird still inside with the cage door still open and you wonder.
Why didn’t the bird fly away? Doesn’t it want to be free? Doesn’t it want to go home? Unfortunately, the only home this bird has ever known is its cage, so it stayed.
We all want freedom but some of us have no idea what freedom even looks like. Can you handle being free? Can you handle the great unknown? Would you even know the first step to take if they opened the cage? Our cages look different. Some may be academic and some may be financial. We’re waiting for something to happen, for the key to finally click so that we can finally be free and happy. We’re waiting to top the class and finally feel content and free. Free from the bondage of academic failure. We are waiting for this relationship, for someone to come and save us, to be free from the bondage of being lonely.
I think my cage for most of my life has been academics. I feared failure and so I worked so hard to not fail. I was too hard on myself and I sacrificed so many relationships because I thought, once I pass my final exams, I will work on everything that was collateral damage. The point was to be free. Free from all the expectations to outdo myself every single time in my exams. Free from the pressure to be nothing but the best and funny enough, most of the expectations were those I placed on myself because I did not know better. To me, contentment came after academic success.
Fast forward to university and it is the complete opposite. I got the freedom I wanted and there was no pressure. No one was checking my grades to see whether I had failed or improved. No one knew me so no one expected anything from me. We’re over 500 students so there’s no way a lecturer will notice me and expect me to top the class in each and every paper. I was free right? This is what I wanted. Free from everyone’s expectations in terms of academics. Students, teachers, friends. Free! The door had been opened and all I had to do was take the first step and bask in this freedom.
At the end of my first year though, I was so frustrated. I felt like I was getting lazy. I wasn’t topping the class and I wasn’t the top achiever in medical school. I was still performing mind you but not like I wanted. I craved the pressure. I craved the expectations and all I wanted was to go back to my cage and lock the door. Why?
Because it was familiar. It was home. My identity was tied to academics and if I wasn’t performing excellently, then who was I? At least in my cage, I was someone, you know. A prisoner to the education system but still someone. I felt like then I had a purpose and just like the beautiful bird, I wanted someone to just carry me and place me in my cage. I wanted that intensity and the feeling of being burnt out every day after reading and pushing myself to the limit because that was my normal.
Stepping out of the cage feels scary. So many questions are rushing through your mind, can you fly? Can you do things on your own? Can you create your own home? Are you safe? I found safety in my cage because it was familiar and if you look around you, everyone is in their cage. Stepping out feels wrong. Flying feels wrong but once you do it, it’s nothing less than amazing.
I want to fly and find my identity in myself. I want to do things not because of anyone’s expectations but because of me. I want to feel the wind beneath my wings because I know that I can fly. I do not have to be the best, all I have to do is my best.
A statement that I really like is, ‘The world is your oyster.’ You can do anything you want to. In high school, my world revolved around academics, and yet there is so much more to life than the results for my physics one paper. There is so much out there for me. No bird is born capable of flight but the instinct to become airborne is strong from birth. You feel it and I feel it too. You and I both know that we haven’t even begun to see the great things we will do. You know that if you take one step, it’s only onwards. Flight isn’t instant but gradually mastered through practice and observation. It requires the first step.
So I hope 2023 is for flying. I hope you break out of that cage. I hope you realize that sometimes, there isn’t even a cage. Sometimes we are prisoners to our minds and sometimes the cage was opened a long time ago. I hope you’re like Michael Scofield because it’s time for prison break. (No, I have not watched prison break and yes, this is an example of the jokes I make.) Sometimes we feel like we are not in control of our own lives and our fate has already been decided for us but when something happens and we are given back the “control”, we are stuck because how can you start to fly if you’ve never even used your wings?
In the African education system, this is very common. You are told what to do and what not to do and anything that has not been approved by the teacher is wrong even when the teacher is actually wrong which happens because they are only human but you can not question his/her authority. You are told to focus on your sciences and work hard to be either an engineer, lawyer, or doctor but they can’t decide for you because ‘the ball is in your court.’ No pressure, they say as they continue to apply immense pressure and when you finish, after over thirteen years of being told what to do, it all stops. Everyone stops and looks at you and starts asking, ‘So what are you going to do with your life?’
After being programmed to live a certain way, you enter a society that doesn’t work like the system because life is not black and white or yes or no. Life is gray and maybe and everything in between and you find yourself craving for that environment of being told what to do because for the first time, you have to decide what you want and everyone is waiting. No pressure they said, as they continue to apply the pressure. The control you have over your identity and status in society is taken from you once you enter and handed back to you on your way out. It’s time to be an adult and do what adults do.
No one is to blame I guess, we are all in a cycle of repeating what has been done to us and teaching what we know as our truth. The only thing I ask from you is that you fly. Fly to your paradise, whatever that may look like.
Once you have tasted flight, you forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return.
