You know animals can teach us a lot about life.
It was Good Friday and Ross and I were relaxing in the loungeroom when we noticed three kookaburras sitting on the railing on the front verandah.
They weren’t there long before they were joined by magpies, a currawong and a butcher bird.
Now, ordinarily Ross and I would not feed birds because we recalled a sign in a Queensland national park when we were travelling that said, “A fed bird is a dead bird”.
So generally, we won’t feed birds.
For some reason, on this day, Ross had some left over meat and so he threw it on the verandah.
The kookaburras jumped in, grabbed what they could, flew off and proceeded to shake their beaks to kill their prize.
The butcher bird also took flight, grabbed a piece and flew off.
Not so the magpies and currawong.
They hesitated.
They were on high alert.
They kept looking this way and that.
To Ross and I there was clearly no danger.
They could have quickly swooped down, grabbed their share and flown off.
Still they waited.
Still they hesitated, until finally one of the magpies made a daring dash.
With prize in mouth, the magpie took off.
I didn’t see it again until a week later when I heard a commotion outside.
As I looked out the window, the magpie was scolding its young and pushing it away as it ran across the yard with its stash from a few days before.
The magpie then hid its stash under the bushes on the other side of the yard.
So what are they teaching us?
Apart from “Don’t feed the birds”, they are teaching us not to wait, rather to just jump in.
If fear is holding you back, you are likely to miss out.
If there is something you want, I encourage you to just jump in and go for it.
The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll get your prize.
In fact, I have a poster in my room that was a gift from a podcast guest, that says, “Everything you want is on the other side of fear”.
Just jump in.
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