A Bird's Eye View

I took the subway to work today. I walked up the same blocks to the same station that I walk up every day. Then I sat on the train for the same amount of time that I do every day. And got off at the same station I get off at every day. I suddenly felt bored. The monotony of the day, the doldrum, sunk in as I realized that I walk the same walk every day.

And for some reason, I remembered when I was a wide-eyed, bushy-tailed intern in New York. I took the subway every day, went through the same motions, but it was all so exciting and full of possibilities. And every morning, I went to the coffee shop on the corner (which, sadly, is no longer there) to see my boyfriend-at-the-time. He worked there and always gave me an iced latte for the morning commute. That was a nice way to start the day. But that wasn't the only nice thing about that time in my life. I was just starting out, so full of optimism that I was going to do fun, exciting things with my life. Now I just feel mediocre and mundane. Maybe it's my impending birthday, I don't know.

As I was walking up the escalator, exiting the subway station, I saw a bird perched looking down at all of us. And I wondered, as we all want to be free like the bird, to fly our way through the world, is the bird watching because he wants to be like us? Sometimes I feel like the grass is always greener, and I'm not sure how to escape that feeling.

I was reading a devotional the other night which mentioned the following verse -

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead."

And that, I think, should be the focus. Not thinking too much about the good old days, but concentrating more on what's good about the here and now. In reality, that's what the bird is thinking about. Birds, I recently had to explain to my grandmother, have very short lives. That bird was not thinking about the lives of the commuters he gazed down upon. He was thinking about whether we would leave crumbs behind for him to eat. Or he was thinking about the cool shade he was sitting in at the moment. His life is too short, after all, to spend time thinking about the nevers and maybes and could've-beens. And ours are too.