Our patio table has an umbrella that we left open for a few weeks. We noticed that a beautiful bird with a red head was sitting underneath the umbrella on a nest that he was building. My kids thought he was so cute and wanted to leave him be, but I knew that nest couldn’t stay. We planned to eat at that table afterall. We kept watching him fly back and forth with twigs in his mouth adding to his ill-fated home. Finally, we showed my husband and he immediately took action, albeit with hesitation and some regret, and knocked the nest down with a stick. Soon after, the bird arrived with yet another twig, but this time he appeared very confused. He kept looking in every direction and flying around our now closed umbrella searching for his home. He would land on a different chair each time, as if to search from another angle, perhaps wondering if he might find it from that side instead. I can just imaging what he was thinking, “I know it was here. I’m sure this is the place. I worked so hard! I had great plans for this home. Now what?!”
It made me think about our homes and our lives. Here we were working hard, building our lives, making plans to do this or that, travel here or there. We thought we were in charge of our destiny. We thought we had control. But it was never so. It was all an illusion. Businesses that people spent years building were shut down with a single order. Savings that people worked hard to grow, plummeted in hours and days. My kids’ Springfield school trip and Outdoor Education trip that were scheduled last week and this week were never supposed to happen. Neither were prom or graduation for 2020 high school seniors.
We could argue with our new reality and lament the loss we feel. It’s normal to feel sad and confused, the way I’m sure the bird felt when he lost his home. But how we interpret our reality can determine our future. Do we sit here and discard this year as “the Year that Never Was” as so many online have called it. Or do we look at it as the year that changed everything … for the better.
I’m not sure where that bird is now, but I hope that he built a new nest in a better location. I hope his family can join him and he can have some baby birds that can be born and grow and build nests of their own some day. I hope we, too, can rebuild our homes and our lives. I hope that our post-corona life is better and stronger than it was before. I hope we all find ourselves in a better place, whether physically or mentally. I hope we also remember that while we are never in control of our circumstances, we have complete control of our response. Let’s choose to rebuild, to smile, and to live no matter what the circumstance.
How do you want to see 2020?
