Yes, I'm flying now !. Review on Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited idea of freedom and precision flying is a step toward expressing our real nature. Everything that limits us we have to put aside”*

Some days earlier, as I found myself sinking in that familiar darkness of depression again, I realized that it was almost comforting – to just stay here, feeling defeated and helpless, to do just nothing about my present circumstances and to let time wash over me like the waves of a timeless sea.  It was painful to be in that dark space of life, but there did not seem to be any way out either.

And then, like it always happens, a friend suggested me to read ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’. ‘Not another self-help book, please.’ I groaned. I had decided to stay far, far away from the so-called life transforming self-help books simply because right after reading them, you feel a tremendous high, a momentary feeling of exhilaration but then it is just a reaction and like all reactions, it passes and you sink back numbly in your not-getting-anywhere life.

However, my friend was determined to make me read the book “Its NOT a self-help book. It’s fiction. It’s a fable. It’s a cute little book you will finish in just about an hour.”

So there it was – a little book with lovely photographs of a seagull flying, high in the bluest of skies over the calm sea, with accompanying text.

Story

‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’ is a story of seagull who wanted to fly, to soar above the earth and to overcome the limitations he was born with. Like all people who want to be different, he faces opposition from his flock of gulls who punish him, ridicule him and finally isolate him. Though that hurts him for a while, but it’s only for a while and he moves on, in the quest for flight. He hones his flying skills endlessly till he is carried to the next plane of existence, metaphorically called the ‘heaven’ where he meets birds like him who wish to spend their lives flying and reaching new heights. However, after some time, Jonathan Livingstone Seagull comes back to earth to his flock to teach flying to other birds who were longing to fly.

My views

After reading this book, I searched for that momentary reaction inside me – there was none. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull is not something that smacks you in your face and makes you sit up and exclaim ‘Eureka !’

Instead, it seeps into your being, slowly, and whispers in your ears a timeless message that has been written on the stars, read by all and practiced by very few. It’s all about being alone, discovering your own powers and magnifying them, reducing your limitations to a miniscule dot and then attempting to soar above everything earthly.

Whether you are a gull or a man, the universe is waiting for you to open your wings and fly, confident in the knowledge that all the time and space is yours and you have no limits.  As Jonathan Livingstone Seagull himself says :

“But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have  left  is  Now.”

"Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your  body too."

"We're free to go where we wish and to be what we are, "

“Freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.”

The book now proudly sits in my bookshelf, like a little piece of blue sky that I had stolen when no one was looking. On a busy day when I am not sure whether I am coming or going, I sometimes glance at it – and feel completely overwhelmed by a wonderful expectation of the flight that is waiting to set me free.

Just can’t resist adding a poem that I love :

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee