Have you ever been dismayed by that missing element in your life to make you feel complete and satisfied? Have you ever been put down by people who live life just for the sake of living and ridicule any who dare to be different? Have you ever felt that you don’t belong in a society that clings on to unproductive traditions and limiting standards?
I’m sure every one of us has felt this way at some point in our lives because every person is born with a hero in himself. The protagonist of the novel, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is literally a seagull but metaphorically, it is this hero that lies hidden in us somewhere. It is for this reason that the author, Richard Bach, has dedicated this book ‘to the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all’. I will simply narrate the story and quotes from it and when you catch yourself identifying with whatever happens in it, you will know what the author means.
In the beginning of the story, Jon is like any other seagull that lives with his family with the exception that he has curiosity to learn, to fly creatively and faster…rather than live to eat and survive.
“This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jon spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low level glides, experimenting.’’
His mother would ask, ” Why is it so hard for you to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why cant you leave low flying to the pelicans?”
His father said, “If you must learn, then learn food, and how to get it. This flying business is all very well, but you can’t eat a glide, you know. Don’t you forget that the reason you fly is eat.”
He wanted to fly with a high speed and he wanted to glide near the surface of the sea without landing in it. But no matter how hard he tried, he just wouldn’t come around to it the way he wanted. Ultimately, he started to lose faith in himself.
“There’s no way around it. I am a seagull, limited by my nature”. He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the flock. There would be no more ties now to the force that had driven him to learn, there would be no more challenge and no more failure.
When he was just about to retire, the thought struck him like a flash. The eagles can fly faster because of their small wings. If he could just fold his wings and fly with their tips, he would also be able to fly faster. He practised and practised and finally, he had done it!
“When they hear of it, he thought, of the Breakthrough, they’ll be wild with joy. How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging back and forth, 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!”
When his clan heard of his breakthrough, Jon was reprimanded for the irresponsibility of breaking the traditions, for delving into the unknown and was declared an outcast. But this did not dampen his ambitions. He lived alone now; learned more, practiced more without any rules that had restricted him earlier.
“What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had paid. he discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short”.
When he had learned all this, Jon was taken to a place where he found many gulls flying as beautifully as him. “For each of them, the most important thing was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do”. He construed that he must be in Heaven.Here, he met a teacher who taught him, “You can go to any place at any time that you wish to go. The gulls that scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection, go anywhere, instantly!” The master made him perfect his flying by practice and taught him to look beyond time and space. “Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body too”.
The last lesson of his teacher but the most important one was the lesson of love and kindness. “Don’t be harsh on them. In casting you out, the other gulls have only hurt themselves, and one day they will know this, and one day they will see what you see. Forgive them and help them understand.”
Jonathan realised that he had to return to earth now. He had to help them understand something of the truth he had learnt. When he went back and demonstrated of what he had learnt, the flock gathered to question, idolise or scorn him. They either called him Devil or called him God for what he could do which was beyond their imagination. Their criticism and scorn did not make him give up his efforts. “You don’t love hatred and evil in them. You have to practice and seethe real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves.” Only if they had removed the barriers of thought, they would have realised that what Jon did was there to be learnt by anyone who dared to break free.
“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly!!”
If you are the kind of person who puts inspirational posters on your room walls or your office cabin, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a must buy. And now the best part about it…it is a 127-page book half of which is filled with pictures. So for those of you, who are either too busy or too lazy to get your hands on a thick book, go ahead with this one.