Carl Reiner once said – “A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”
I found it very un-romantic, who does not like snow!
The soft white bliss from the heavens to the earth in addition to being the perfect snow fights memory maker. After all, didn’t Markus Zusak (the author of The Book Thief) call a snowball in the face to be the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship?
Those were times, when I was enjoying my childhood in pure tropical bliss. At that point in my life, nothing was worse than a 40 degree Celsius. I used to dream about visiting a country where I could actually see snow in person, not on the screens.
Those were the only dreams that filled my days and nights.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and I found myself in a cold country – cold and beautiful. My dreams finally decided to meet me in person. And guess what, like a crazy barking lunatic, I ran out at the first glimpse of snow – short of singing and dancing, giggling like a schoolgirl.
Your first snow is like your first love, that’s what they say. That’s exactly what it is. Your second love might be Barack Obama, the coolest of them all, but guess what? You are always going to sneak into your ‘first-love-memory-corner’ every now and then.
Long story short – snow started to look less and less dreamy as the years passed by – to the extent that I have actually started dreading a snow forecast now. Somehow, snowflakes now have the precision to hit my eyeballs as soon as I step out. Smack dab in the middle of my eye!
Have the snowflakes trained their algorithm for an eye ball landing over the years? Or were they always precise from the start or did I choose to ignore them earlier and just danced and sang like an idiot in the rain?
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a short novel (or novella) written by Richard Bach in the 1960s. It is a story of a seagull whose name is Jonathan Livingston who is trying to perfect the art of flying.
Over the years, this novel has become a classic and is often considered one of the best inspirational or motivational books ever written.
Who wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is written by Richard Bach.
Interestingly, it was not written as one complete novel initially; Bach wrote it as a series of short stories which was published in a magazine called “Flying” in the later half of 1960s.
Then, the series of short stories was compiled by Richard Bach and was first released as a book in 1970. The book was illustrated by Russell Munson.
Cover of Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Within a few years of publication, Jonathan Livingston Seagull became a best seller and sold millions of copies and became known worldwide.
Who is Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
Jonathan Livingston is the name of the protagonist of book Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He is a seagull who tries to perfect the art of flying.
The name of the novel is also the name of the protagonist of the novel’s story.
Book Summary: What is Jonathan Livingston Seagull about?
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a book by Richard Bach is a story about a seagull’s unbounded passion for flight despite rebuke from his clan, his friends and his most loved ones. His perseverance, and his unquenchable thirst for achieving perfection. Touted as One of the 50 timeless spiritual classics , you will be amazed how he has put this profound truth in such simple words.
Our seagull is bored with the mundane struggle for food every day and disheartened by the lack lustre passion-less lives the seagulls around him love and expect him to conform to. The lack of encouragement from his fellow folk does not deter him from following his passion and he continually keeps pushing himself to learn all he can about flying.
This lack of conforming to the norms does not go down well with his folks and he is subsequently expelled from the flock, bringing shame to his family. A new outcast but free nonetheless, he continues to learn, coming closer and closer to his goal of achieving perfection.
This skill acquired with practice brings him immense joy and resulting contentment in his life.Although alone now, he is a happy seagull.
One fine day, two seagulls meet him and tell him of a better world found through perfection of knowledge, he meets a fellow seagull that has the same passion for flight as himself. His dedication and love for the craft makes him a very distinguished bird and Jonathan prides himself in the fact.
Jon’s dedication and love for the craft makes him a very distinguished bird. (Image by Bruno Glätsch from Pixabay)
Here Jonathan makes friends with a wise gull that reveals to him the secret of
instantaneous movement anywhere in the world, Jonathan marvels at this skill, eventually acquires it and is humbled by his knowledge. He has acquired what he wants , but still feels empty.
Jonathan now feels the urge to return to earth to find others like himself to tell them what he’d learned and to spread his love for flight. He is successful in this endeavor and soon finds himself around other outcast but passionate seagulls.
The first of his students, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, is quick to grasp learnings from Jonathan and ultimately becomes a teacher in his own right. Jonathan leaves to teach other flock thus spreading his love for the flight and the timeless truth of
limitless human potential.
Life lessons from Jonathan Livingston Seagull
“He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.
“Set aside,” came a voice from the multitude, “even if it be the Law of the Flock?”
“The only true law is that which leads to freedom,” Jonathan said. “There is no other.”
Of all the great things Jonathan Livingston seagull has said in Richard Bach’s book of the same name, this speaks the most to me.
To me Jonathan Livingston seagull brings 3 life lessons:
1- Our potential is limited only to the extent we let it to be
And I do not mean in ‘we as humans use only 10% of our potential’ way, but more often than not, we are limited by our perception of what we are capable of achieving. Changing that mindset is solely under our control. Why should we let someone else tell us what we can and can’t do?
Remember Chris from the movie ‘Pursuit of Happyness’? The scene where he tells his son, “Hey. Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. …’.
That about sums it up.
2- Find your passion and be relentless in your pursuit of it
Our seagull Jonathan was exemplary in illustrating that sometimes following our passions can take us away from places and people that we hold dear, but in no way did that deter him from following his passion, or giving it his all. It’s because at the end of the day, he was answerable to himself. And so are we.
To quote Steve Jobs, “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. Being loyal to our passion brings us
profound happiness and contentment and that’s the state that we all ultimately strive for. Don’t we?
3- Pay it Forward
Jonathan didn’t just stop at achieving perfection, he took it a step further. He thought it best that learnings be shared with others, to let them know that we can think beyond our present circumstances for a blissful future.
It may not be entirely selfless given that there is a significant upliftment we feel when we help others , but Hey! its feeding two birds with one scone.
I cannot help but quote Film critic Roger Ebert who praised the book by saying ” the book was so banal that it had to be sold to adults; kids would have seen through it.”
Food for thought.
Want to read Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is available on Amazon if you want to get yourself this book. You can use the links given below to check the price of this book:
‘What you seek is seeking you’- The magnanimity of this short yet power packed quip never ceases to amaze me . Just like wine, they say, the older it gets, the better it becomes.
I often imagine Rumi just walking in the glorious Iranian bazaar , wondering and muttering to himself, randomly looking at the sky when this thought must have struck him like a bolt of lightening, I wonder if it made him look at his life in the rearview mirror or if he started connecting the dots in his life backwards, the famous Steve-Jobs style.
I have played that scenario of his enlightenment in my mind in a thousand different variations, never been able to zero down on one, but the realization itself has been nothing short of life – transforming for me.
It often gets me thinking for long periods of time, sometimes unknowingly having my gaze fixed on a stranger in a café, where a flurry of questions zigzagging through my head in random Brownian motion: What did I seek in the past? What am I seeking now? What am I going to be seeking in future? What am I seeking? And most importantly Why am I seeking what I am seeking? ( A little episode of brain fog ensues….)
And like a jigsaw puzzle , a variety of colors and shapes appear in front of my glazy eyes- only in the form of experiences making it feel like a little time machine experimentation. In this case, more often than not, my personal time machine seems to be eternally rigged to go looking for stuff in the past. I call it the Past Ninja. A deaf past-Ninja, A tunnel-vision-Deaf-Past-Ninja.
Anyway, So here am I-A kid, drooling for icecream all the time and that’s the single most important non-living object in my life and guess what a bunch of relatives make sure that those icecream companies are never out of business and my current frocks always seems one size short.
I was seeking icecream while latent obesity was seeking me. Fast forward to High school library, like every text book nerd, I am pouring over books in my one size short frocks (having realized over the years that ice-creams are faster than willpower) processing books as if from an assembly line, and shuddering at the sound of footsteps coming in my direction, lest those footsteps carry a mouth that doesn’t want to stop talking and even more so if they wanted to talk to me instead of the hottie next seat.As I sought books, they somehow swarmed to me even more, creating a seemingly protective wall around me, blocking out small talk and ‘strangers’ who were in the same class as me. I have a lot of friends, only that they are not physical people (they are only in my head). I am best friends with JK Rowling, Earnest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, Somerset Maugham and Jerome K Jerome to name a few.While I was trying to avoid the physical noise of the footsteps approaching me, there was something else that was seeking me, and those were the characters that were seeking me.Cut to the present me, working a corporate job with the same innate tendency to avoid small talk, judging myself for every smile I fake and expression-less greetings that I get from my ‘stranger’ colleagues. Every now and then , in one of those afternoon meetings, my mind can not keep off from wandering to the same sand as Rumi’s.What have I sought all my life – has actually sought me, not in the exact form I expected it to be , but in a slightly twisted yet interesting way, and I am thankful that it is that way. Otherwise, where’s the fun in life?(More on that some other day)All of that random musing to say, in my opinion, what we seek always seeks us- albeit sometimes exactly the way we see it and sometimes in the complete opposite way. Sometimes comprehensible and sometimes the London-city-jigsaw -puzzle way. But guess what?Dots do connect backwards and if you take the same rigged time machine as me for a journey to your past, you will hopefully discover some pattern in your own existence. Maybe your Rumi is a cool beefy guy roaming shirtless at a beach in Barcelona.
