My Babies Left the Nest

Not those babies! They did, of course, and they're flying spectacularly, bless their dear hearts. And of course, I couldn't resist the urge to put a picture of my pretty babies where everyone could see it ;)

Different babies. I woke up this morning to...nothing. It took me a minute to figure out why that was strange. Every year for decades now a pair of birds (I assume not literally the same birds.) has made a nest on the roof by my bedroom. I can tell when the babies are born, and I listen for their chattering and fluttering around. Then after a few weeks of racket, I remember how much trouble babies are, and I think "for goodness sakes, settle down or fly away!". And then they do, and I miss them. Sound familiar?

I guess yesterday their mother must have decided that the time had come, and she sent them off to try their wings.

The metaphor is so obvious it's a little sloppy. But here's the thing. How does the mom or the baby know it's time to fly? The stakes are a tad high; if she's wrong, it's not going to go well at all. Does the newly-independent baby ever come back to visit the old homestead, looking backward rather than forward?

I guess the birds grow. At first they shift and wiggle and make room for each other, eat more, and generally make it work. And then one day, there is no "making it work." They don't fit in the nest anymore, and off they go. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved at the level of thinking that created them in the first place. So, the baby birds have a paradigm shift? I suppose they must. They fly away, and as far as I know, don't come back.

And if they can do it, I can do it. I think about the broken-me of last fall, and realize it's important to claim the progress I've made and the successes I've had. And even some of the failures were successes of a sort, because I found the courage to try. Thinking small -being small- was my part in the marital debacle. I was unfaithful to me. So,continuing to be small, assuming Einstein is right, is not going to get me out of this jam.

Thinking I need to challenge:
I'll never get a better job.
I can't return to academia.
I will always be pudgy.
I can't be financially independent.
I won't succeed alone.
I'm physically weak.
My body is betraying me.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could get that chatter to silence, just like the baby birds flew away and left silence behind??? I'll work on it. I have to.