Listen to the Birds: Spring Is Coming!

I’m looking at a nest precariously sitting in a tall tree, and the birds look like floating leaves in the clear, blue spaces between the branches. And hear them, even with my windows shut. Spring is coming! And it demands to be noticed. It feels…different. It’s as if your whole body reacts to the change, and something shifts. That heavy winter, the one that made you drag your feet every morning in the dark cold, where coffee wasn’t hot enough, now shifts to hope, like those floating leaves, and something says, deep inside you—Clean up. Get it together. Shake that baggage.  Simplify. Become lighter!

It makes me want to strap on my Converse and walk and notice and breathe. That’s what spring is. BREATH. It’s the conscious inhaling and exhaling of breath. And that does more for our psyche than any drug or substance. It is a physical and mental warmth. It’s a meditation, if you let it be. You put your head to the sun and let it warm you, and FEEL it, not superficially. You feel less harried. Less stressed. You don’t want to rush the way you do in winter. There is no longer a need to rush from house to car to car to building to car again to get anywhere but the cold, running to get out of the pelts of snow or wind. Instead, you feel your neck removing itself from your ears. You let your arms hang in a natural rhythm by your side. You’re no longer freezing. It’s quite fascinating when you stop and really think about it. That tension of pulling coats close and tucking scarves into necks so they don’t move as you walk is gone. You don’t even mind standing in one place. You feel each muscle unfurling, the tension and aches--gone. You can…think. That blue is brighter than any color you’ve ever seen.

So what will you do to stop and breathe? What baggage will you leave behind? Sit for a bit. Watch the birds-- for they are "the secrets of living”—and hear them, even if it’s the first time.