Tales from a Sparrow

This morning I went for a run in Clove Lakes Park.  On my second lap around the lake I noticed a sparrow just sitting on the asphalt trail.  I ran past it and the small, grey bird didn’t flinch which I thought was odd; (usually birds will flutter away a few feet when you get too close).  So I continued on my run not thinking much of it. 

On my third lap I saw the same bird in obvious distress; it was collapsed on the floor and only flapping one wing violently back and forth.  I saw a parks department official standing nearby and flagged her down.  “Yes we are aware and someone’s coming for it”.

 

Being a lover of all creatures, I continued on my run with a heavy conscience.  I did not have my cell phone or my car so I would have to carry him home.  I did not have anything to carry the poor thing in so I would need to borrow a blanket.  Maybe the parks workers would have something I could carry him in.  Where could I take a sick bird?  My vet only deals with cats and dogs.  Would his care be expensive?  I have work so I would need my mom to take him somewhere.  I kept vacillating back and forth between a million different decisions.

 

Finally, halfway through my lap I decided I would take him if no one else would.  I already had visions of nursing him back to health, (maybe it was just a broken wing) and releasing him back into the wild. 

 

Rounding the baseball field on my fourth lap I did not see the bird anywhere on the ground.  I asked a worker standing nearby where it was and she said on the grass. She mentioned an unfamiliar organization that was coming to get it.  I found the sparrow lying on leaf by a tree with a small, elderly, Hispanic woman hunched over the bird gently stroking its feathers with a stick.  “He dead,” she said in a thick, Spang-lish accent.  I looked at the little thing and became overwhelmingly upset.  I know many people do not understand this feeling or cannot relate, but it is really hard for me to articulate just how much I appreciate and am in awe of animals.  It is true that I am freakishly devoted to animals; indeed I prefer them to humans even.  The sparrow laid there motionless; it was obvious he had passed.  I left him there and continued on my run ruminating.  On my fifth lap around I searched for the bird again, hoping to see it hopping away fine, but it was gone. 

I do some of my best thinking while running.  On my way home I thought about the whole situation.  I spent more time thinking and planning on what to do than action.  Obviously, if in the moment I saw him, and if I took him, I would not have gotten any help in time because he died in probably less than 20 minutes.  I had no wallet or ID and I would have had to run with him all the way home, (which is easily 25 minutes away from where I was).  The situation got me thinking on a much more abstract, philosophical level, almost to the extent where it had nothing to do with the bird.  We spend so much of our lives worrying, planning, backtracking, weighing options, regretting, etc. We waste our lives in dead end jobs or relationships because we always think that it is too hard to go searching for something new.  There is never enough time; there is never enough money, so you put off what you could have done today for tomorrow, which becomes the day after that, and the day after that.  The bird made me realize just how profound the idea that every second you wait is a second wasted.

It also struck me how something that was seemingly healthy not 15 minutes ago was now gone.  It makes one appreciate just how precious life is.  In hindsight, I would not have been able to save this little bird.  But it made me realize just how much time I personally spend on making decisions without living in the moment.  The heroine in me would have scooped the bird up immediately and ran like Hermes all the way back to my house.  However the planner in me made me hesitate and weigh all the options before deciding on a course of action.  Obviously, life calls for decision making and weighing the pros and cons of every situation.  But wouldn’t it be liberating to just once in awhile do away with reason and logic and live passionately and presently in the moment on a whim?  I think a lot of great thinkers, leaders, and revolutionaries shared this impulsive trait.  Conversely, I also suppose that this is a cause for many great failures and defeats throughout history.  Ultimately, I guess life is a gamble, risk takers can win big or lose it all, and the majority of us are just clumped somewhere in the middle. 

Self-doubt, lack of self- confidence, feelings of inadequacy, fear of failure, the lack of resources, and a countless number of other variables all contribute to the demise of our dreams and goals.  Although my stream of consciousness has grossly digressed from that of a tale about a dead bird to the quest for self-actualization, I feel that the moral here is do act sometimes on intuition and gut feelings rather than on rhyme and reason.  Sometimes, it’s just more fulfilling that way.

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new”