A Reminder from a Sparrow

My wife called me excitedly and I went quickly, to find her pointing her finger out of the kitchen glass door. There was a sparrow pecking away at some boiled rice. She then told me that the sparrow had perched itself outside our kitchen chirping. As she looked out, she felt it was calling out to her. Thinking just maybe it is hungry, she placed some boiled rice at the edge of the railing. The sparrow pecked away in haste and that was the scene I watched. While the scene had it's touch of sadness, it was also beautiful. It was delightful to watch as the sparrow ate the rice.

I thought it was worth taking a picture or a video of the scene and grabbed my phone. As I lifted my hand, though close to 5 feet away, the sparrow looked up and seemed nervous. I abandoned the attempt and lowered my hands. We just continued to watch. After a few minutes, the sparrow hopped a few steps and flew off. 

This is probably an every day event with nothing extraordinary. And yet, when we immersed ourselves in it, it seemed to fill our souls. Mindful moments have that effect. 

We, humans, have distanced ourselves greatly from nature and other life forms. When I was in school, we kids used to play a game called “Name – Place – Animal – Thing”. A starting letter used to be chosen and we had to find words in all these categories. While only a game, it is I think, a reflection of how we think. There is us – names, and there are places – quite useful to us, then there are animals (birds, reptiles are included) and finally things. Evolution has made us a powerful life form, and we deal with nature & other life forms from the aspect of power and control. If only we recognised the oneness of the universe and used harmony and understanding as the interaction principle, rather than power, the universe would be better off and consequently we too. I suppose we have such attitude issues with other humans many times as well.

It is unclear what the precise impact of global warming will be, but hopefully it can prompt us to introspect and re-align out attitude and approach to nature and other life forms.

We demand a lot from a universe which has very simply offered itself to us in it's entirety. We must learn. And today, it was a sparrow which was the messenger.

(Image from pixabay.com. As I wrote I did not click a picture of the sparrow we watched).