Jonathan Livingston
Seagull written by Richard
Bach
The story is for people who follow their
hearts and make their own rules… people who get special pleasure out of doing
something well, even if only for themselves… people who know there is more to
living than meets the eye. They are like Jonathan, flying higher and faster than
they have ever dreamed.
Later in the book, Jonathan is met by two gulls who
take him to a "higher plane of existence" in which there is no heaven
but a better world found through perfection of knowledge. There he meets other
gulls who love to fly. He discovers that his sheer tenacity and desire to learn
make him "pretty well a one-in-a-million bird." In this new place,
Jonathan befriends the wisest gull, Chiang, who takes him beyond his previous
learning, teaching him how to move instantaneously to anywhere else in the Universe.
The secret, Chiang says, is to "begin by knowing that you have already
arrived."
Below are some quotes from the
story:
Most
gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight – how to get
from the shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not the flying
that matters, but eating.
How
much there is to living! Instead of our drab slogging back and forth to the
fishing boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of
ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and
skill. We can be free. We can learn to fly.
Jonathan
discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that the gull’s life
is so short and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life
indeed.
When Jonathan asks, if heaven exists:
“No.
Jonathan, there is no such place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.
The Elder explains:
“You
will begin to touch heaven in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that
isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of
light. Because any number is a limit and perfection doesn’t have limits.
Perfect speed, my son is being there!”
EXERCISE: Do you think the author is
really writing about seagulls or the human experience? Why / why not?
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