Little bird

Today it is blustery outside.  I mean, really blustery.  When I was eating breakfast, the wind was rattling the window next to me.  It's gray and rainy, too, which made it a cozy morning to head over to CorePower for some hot yoga.

The class was great, and I felt appropriately wrung out and energized for the day ahead when class ended and I stood up and started rolling up my mat.  I looked out the window and saw a tree I had never noticed before from this unique vantage point, on the second story of a street on which I run nearly daily. Some parts of the tree were swaying and other parts were whipping back and forth, thanks to the wind, and then I noticed way, way up high, sitting on the highest branch practically above the rest of the tree and all of its windy mayhem, was one little bird.

This little bird wholeheartedly captivated me. I stood on my mat for a couple of minutes, watching him stand firm up there. No one was there to give him a little bird medal for doing it. In fact, I think there's a good chance that I was the only person in the whole world to see this little bird because of my weird vantage point. And it might have been because I was feelin' the yoga energy, or maybe because Jeff Buckley's rendition of "Hallelujah" was playing in an otherwise silent space, but it struck me as such a beautiful tiny moment courtesy of the universe that I was almost overwhelmed.

I kept thinking about that little bird, as I went home and got ready for work, had my coffee, took a few minutes to memorize the next line of a poem.

The beauty of a small moment like that is that one can extrapolate any message or lesson he or she would like from it - or nothing at all.

Was that bird an example of triumphing over adversity?

Was he reminding us to work hard and do our best, even if no one's watching?

Was he showing that one can rise above a storm and find stillness? Or maybe that a seemingly insurmountable challenge is worth the effort after all?

Obviously, it's open to any amount of interpretation. Maybe the bird was just taking a minute up there to check out a sweeping Friday morning view.  For me, it was a small gift at an early hour to take with me through the day.