Trust the Bird, Not the Book
A reminder to look up.
There's a bird-watching turned Buddhist teaching we often reference in our family: "When the bird and book disagree, trust the bird."
I've been thinking about this lately, when I catch myself using Google to navigate routes I know by heart, or asking Claude for the "best" title for a post – as if artificial intelligence knows better than my own intuition. With each small surrender, I feel a subtle eroding of something essential: my capacity to trust myself.
Have you felt it too? The creeping tendency to defer to digital authorities over our deeper knowing? The impulse to trust the GPS over the road, the algorithm over our instinct, the book over the bird?
I've always been drawn to the sky—and especially, to the birds.
In my 20s and 30s, I saw myself as a hummingbird: wings beating at a frenzied clip, buzzing between projects, cross-pollinating like my life depended on it. When I shared this with my husband Joel, he smiled and, true to form (his magic is often wrapped in scientific precision) explained their biological catch-22: hummingbirds burn so much energy existing that they're trapped in a perpetual cycle of flying to eat and eating to fly. No room for rest—a parallel that wasn't lost on me.
Now in my ripening 40s (oh, how each decade gets better!), I still feel a flash of recognition when hummingbirds whir by, but just watching them exhausts me. At this stage, the pelicans feel more my speed—gliding, discerning, diving deep, but only when it’s needed.
Some of my most profound insights have come from looking up:
Dawn in Brooklyn, 2006. Walking down a quiet street, savoring the solitude of the still-sleeping city. A flock of asphalt-grey pigeons sweeps overhead. In a flash, I know: it's time for a new chapter. (Imagine my Business School application: "Why now? The birds told me so...” )
Noon in Nepal, 2022. On a hillside, mesmerized by a cherry red paraglider tracing circles overhead until it disappears—obscured by the glare of the sun. Minutes later it returns, descending in a corkscrew before touching down. Watching this flying-human trade stable ground for mapless sky, I feel a swell of courage: it's time to build again.
Golden hour at Point Reyes, 2023. Walking with my dear friend
along the coastline—soft sand, pink sky, glittering water. The pelicans beckon: I watch one deliberate, plunge and emerge triumphant. Something clicks."We’ll call it The Flight School," I tell Michelle, delighting in these perfect words for what I’d struggled to name. Evocative, provocative, spirit-infused — an invitation to pause, look up, leap.
Trusting the birds has taught me to trust other things, too:
Altitude: The birds-eye view reveals what's often invisible from the ground – broader context, emerging patterns, distant horizons. From above we see the whole game and can choose our next move from a broader perspective—responding to the world not just as it is, but as it can become.
Kairos: Birds don't track the hours, but somehow know exactly when to build a nest, when to rest, and when to embark on Arctic-to-Antarctic migrations. It's the difference between what the Greeks called chronos (clock time that's linear and measurable) and kairos (sensing when the time is right)—honoring natural rhythms that get everything done without ever being in a hurry.
Collective Wisdom: I'm fascinated by murmurations – thousands of starlings shape-shifting as one fluid organism with no single bird leading. Nature's genius on display, pointing to a swarm intelligence more adaptive than any of us on our own.
Could there be a better model for leadership? For navigating our lives? For survival in a world that's never changed this fast but will never change this slowly again?
Three months ago, stepping into our new Berkeley house for the first time, I knew: this hilltop perch would become home. There was much to love, but for me it was the expanse of sky visible from every room — its mercurial modes and moods, a constant reminder of life's only constant: change.
Now, countless times a day, I'm pulled out of my earthly trance by teachers outside my window. Crows and hawks circling while I'm zooming, wrestling a paragraph, wrangling my boys out the door for school. From my peripheral vision (another ability endangered by our heads-down hustle) a flash of movement pulls me skyward. When I pause to follow the flight path—soaring, then vanishing— something shifts. Breath softens. Storyline fades. Awareness refreshes. My agency is restored.
Of course, I only see the birds I see, so there’s also a pang of remorse — how many magical moments do I miss while drowning in digital distractions? But when my attention is free enough to follow, they kindle my courage.
"See us?" they sing. "Look up, we're here! And you? You're right where you're meant to be."
My boys and I recently watchedThe Wild Robot. Mid-movie, Roz (a robot) sends her son (a gosling) off to join his flock as they migrate. "Fly like you, not like them!" she implores with the bittersweet wisdom of a mother letting go.
How many times do our hearts stall because we won't let the wingspan of our passion open us fully into our gifts? How frequently do we search for a song of guidance that can only come from inside us?
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The most trustworthy teachers don’t ask us to blindly believe what they say; they encourage us to discover truth for ourselves.
Earlier this week, one of our Flight School Fellows shared what her Launch Year is teaching her: "Truth isn't your truth until it is lived."
THIS is what it means to trust the bird.
When we remember to look up, we touch the part of us that knows our innate freedom. Once we know it, we can’t unknow it. And then, we can’t help but commit to the joyful responsibility of setting others free.
This is what our wild and precious lives are inviting us to do.
With a deep bow to my birds, and ours –
Abby
How to Practice: Trusting the Bird
Pema Chödrön tells a story about a man who survived living in a Japanese internment camp during WWII by looking at the sky. Every day he found comfort in seeing the clouds still drifting, the birds still flying. Years later, he reflected that this practice helped him open the aperture on his experience – allowing him to trust that life’s goodness would continue, despite everything he was enduring.
A short practice to try:
A few questions to consider:
What happens in your body when you (literally) look up?
What messages does the sky have for you today?
Where in your life are you ready to trade the book for the bird?
Abby, I loved this. Your words brought such a gentle nudge to look up and tune back in.
The idea of trusting the bird, not the book. Yes! I love that. It brought back a memory from my teens, when I used to play a game with friends: they’d blindfold me, drive somewhere unknown, and I’d try to navigate us home. This was a time before GPS. Getting purposely lost and finding our way back by internal compass was such fun. I miss that sometimes. These days, I remind myself that even the GPS is part of the universe, too. But there’s still something powerful about listening within instead of “with-out.”
The image of the hummingbird hit me as well. “Trapped” within their perpetual motion of energy consumption and use. The contrast of that with the pelican reminded me that the albatross spends more than 80% of its life at sea and has found a way to sleep while flying. The diversity of experience in birds is so amazing.
This whole piece felt like a hand gently lifting my chin toward the sky. Thank you for helping me remember to look up. And to listen for the inner song only I can hear. 🙏
Loved this article Abby with so many valuable reminders and insights. "Fly like you, not like them!" might become a new go to mantra for myself and the young people I work with every day.