There’s a robin at our window.
This Spring A Robin Took Up Battle Flying At Our Window
Over and over for hours and days this robin kept flying at our window. Pecking at it, clawing it. It even managed to draw blood during this fierce battle with our window.
It sounds ridiculous. And it is.
But for this bird, it was the fight of a lifetime. Not with a window, but with another robin as fit and aggressive as it was.
This Fierce Competitor Matched The Robin Blow For Blow
For every scratch there was a scratch. For every peck, there was a hearty peck in return. When it moved left, the other moved left to match it. When it swooped in from above, the other robin was on it, swooping from above as well.
There was no escaping, no outmaneuvering, because the competitor this robin was fighting was its own reflection. It was impossible to win the fight against this virtual bird. And it was equally impossible to be defeated by it.
That’s why this robin was locked into a war game that it could not break. It kept coming back, weary and beaten down, to challenge this hearty foe again and again and again.
Unfortunately I Don’t Speak Robin
If I did, I’d have asked, “O Robin, your foe is a bird, is that true?” To which it probably would have said, “Yes.” And I’d have continued with, “Can you absolutely know it’s a bird?”
I can see the robin cocking its head as it looks at me. “Yes,” it solemnly replies.
“How do you react, what happens, when you believe that it’s a bird?” The robin says, “I attack it.”
“Who would you be without the thought that its a bird?” I continue. The robin stops and thinks a bit before replying, “I’d go hunt for worms.”
Who Knew Robins Could Do The Work?
But in my imagination anything is possible. I even got this robin to do some turnarounds. The turnaround to the opposite that it found was “My foe is not a bird.” And the examples it found for this turnaround were 1) that there was no chirp, 2) this “bird” mirrored its own movements a little too perfectly to be real, and 3) it was kind of hard to see.
And the robin found another turnaround, “My foe is myself.” This really seemed to bring it home for the robin. It laughed, as only a robin can laugh, and flew away, free as a bird.
Since then I’ve seen it several times talking quite intimately with its birdmates trying to convey the insight that it had, “There was no foe at all. It was just me that I was fighting all along.”
Have a great week,
Todd
“As it keeps inquiring, the mind continues to understand that it is its only enemy and that the world is entirely its projection, that it is alone, that there is no other, and that this is absolute.” Byron Katie, A Thousand Names For Joy
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