Departing From Pandemonium
“Doctor please help me, there’s a civil war going on between my ears”
“Unfortunately I cannot remove your brain”
The patient is suffering from a severe case of overthinking. What I call “the cure and the cause”, the beauty and ugly of the mind. The mind is a playground full of oxymorons, the same mind that birthed dreams is the same to also kill dreams.
“There is one thing I can do for you. Take this pill, it will give you bird characteristics meaning you will have supreme focus. Your priorities like a bird will be to take off, land and fly. Come back in a week and if you see no change I will eat my shirt !”
In haste to take the medication the patient had already fled the doctors office just as he was about to finish his sentence.
Day 1 — Still overthinking.
“What is in this so called pill anyway?” “Maybe if I take another one it will work better”
Day 2 — In doubt.
“I guess it hasn’t started working yet”
Day 3 — Fed up.
She decides to read the packaging of the medication. It has no ingredients or instructions on how to take it, all that is written on the packaging is “When in doubt remember you are a bird”
Day 4 — Awakening.
After another rough night, she decides to get up and go for a walk. After 20 mins she finds herself at her local park. A gang of pigeons fled to abandoned lunch, she pauses her music and observes. After eating they took off into the clear blue sky and that’s when it hit her.
The birds take off into a realm of peace, nothing but tranquility lives in the sky. Birds cannot overthink whilst in mid-air because chaos cannot exist in such a pure environment.
Day 5 — Action.
“I am a bird” “My mind is the sky”
She writes a list of all of her problems and challenges them. After 2 hours of crossing them off she realised that her problems no longer exist. Once she scrunched up the paper, they disappeared. “I don’t have to escape from me, I am a bird and my mind is the sky”
Day 6 — Affirmation.
“Okay now that I’ve got this whole taking off thing figured out, now its time to work on landing”
Under her coffee table lies her notepad where she keeps all of her unfulfilled plans and dreams. She trembles at the volume of her neglected ambitions. “Time to land”
36 emails, a phone call she had been avoiding for hours and 6 bills later, she had finally landed.
Day 7 — Departing From Pandemonium, Soaring into Serendipity.
/doctor’s office/
“Doctor this stuff is amazing!”
“I’m glad you have made a speedy recovery”
“I don’t know how to thank you, I have achieved more this week than I have in years”
Before saying their goodbyes the doctor sat her down and finally told her the truth.
“It wasn’t the pill that changed you, it was you.”
“How? You told me I would have bird characteristics and I did ! I took off and fled my problems, I landed and took care of all unfinished plans just like a bird swallowing a worm. I was so precise and resilient, the pill worked doctor!”
The “pill” was actually a Vitamin C tablet. Ironically because she believed the pill could stop her from overthinking, it was all mental. Unknowing to her she was her cure, only she had the power to take control of thoughts she created. “Now you are aware of how powerful your mind is, take back your power and remember to take off, fly and land”.
to my fellow birds..
Overthinking is toxic, it derives from doubt. We have unlimited power to visualise, create and bring our dreams/ideas to life. Take care of your mind, it is the womb of life’s purpose. Feed it with positive thoughts daily, these thoughts will blossom into a positive life.
“Why do birds matter?” is one of those questions like “What is love?” or “Why are we here?” or even “Is there a God?” Unanswerable, I think, by logic. One could cite facts like, birds eat lots of harmful insects, charm us at our feeders, or challenge us to learn their field marks, molts, and names both common and scientific. But perhaps the answer lies deeper. Since the beginning, birds have lifted our eyes to the skies. They’ve shown us we’re not gravity’s slave, that flight is possible and limitless. It can hover and soar, dive and display, and take us from one end of the planet to the other in a single, impossible burst of energy and purpose. Inspiration is the gift birds have given us from the start. But now they give us a question as well. Like the canary in the mine, they hold the planet up to us like a mirror and ask: “Can you not see that if we pass away, soon you will as well?” That’s a good question, and since birds pose it, they matter a lot. — Wes Craven, Hollywood director