Activity

A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on its own wings.

Life is a vast expanse, an open sky where you are the bird and the potentialities are your wings. The branches are the external circumstances, the fleeting supports that life offers. They are transient, impermanent. Trusting the branch is like trusting the outside world to be stable and unchanging when, in all certainty, it is not.

Understanding the quote, you must see that the bird represents an inner state, a tranquillity and confidence that comes not from relying on the unpredictabilities of life – the branches – but on one’s own inner strength, one’s own wings. Trusting one’s wings is an allegory for relying on oneself, one’s skills, abilities, and inner resilience.

To depend on outside circumstances is to invite fear, because they can change and often do. However, to depend on oneself, on one’s inner capacity for adaptation, learning, and growth, is to cultivate an inner sanctuary of trust. Then, even if a branch breaks, the bird is not perturbed, because it knows it can fly to another branch, or even soar higher into the sky.

So cultivate your wings – your self-reliance, your talents, your inner wisdom. When you have faith in these, you will navigate through life with the grace and ease of the bird in the sky, who does not fear the breaking of branches, because it knows it has the power to fly.