You Get to Sing a Song

When I consider the size and scope of things I have to come to the conclusion that our stay on this planet isn’t very long. Of course, it is also true in the grand scheme of things that we are here exactly how long we are supposed to be here. It depends on your point of view.

When I was younger, I thought that the affection that older people have for common backyard birds was kind of silly. I mean, who has time to watch sparrows and blue jays? 

Now that I am older, it turns out that I have time to watch these birds. I enjoy and learn from them every day. We have a few feeders out in our back yard within view of our kitchen window and that window acts as a sort of natural television into the world.

I won’t bore you with all I have learned about birds. I have made a weird sort of discovery this week that I want to present to you and see what you think. It has to do with one of the deadliest battlefields of the First World War – Passchendaele. 

Passchendaele was a small village in Belgium that lay on some high ground in the larger Ypres salient. In 1917 the Germans held it and the Allies wanted it. The battle itself ran between July 31 and November 6. The advance the Allies had to make in this time was five miles over open, muddy ground in full view of the German guns.

This one battle that transpired over a three-month period killed or wounded 325,000 Allied and 260,000 German soldiers. This number does not include the thousands upon thousands of civilians and animals killed or the number of people permanently scarred by the unbelievable gore and death. 

It was horrible and I don’t want to write anything more about it. What I do want to mention is the birds. The people still alive on the battlefield when the shooting ended – shooting that included the firing of 4.5 million artillery shells by the Allies during one day in preparation for the attack -- first noticed that the very first time the guns were silent they could once again hear the songs of birds in the area.

The birds were singing. 

Had they been singing all along? Nobody knows because nothing makes more noise than millions of high explosive and poison gas artillery shells.

The main job of birds is singing, whether there is a world war going on or not. They were made to sing and so, they sing. They come out and sing after battles. They come out and sing after hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and political conventions. 

Birds are birds and live their life’s purpose no matter what else is going on in the world.

What about us? Don’t we have a song to sing? Do we have something more important and vital to do than notice the storm that is around us today?

 Our skills and talents go far beyond worrying about current or future problems. Our lives are too important to be spending all of our time arguing about the past. Think of all the ideas that have helped the world and made it more beautiful that were first thought of during plagues and wars.  

Why are you here? What is your song or talent that goes beyond the noise?

 Our lives as humans are finite and delicate things and they mean something, or we would not be here right now. There is infinitely more to us than arguing, worrying, and fighting each other. We all have a song to sing and something to add that is good into the world.  

 The birds know what we constantly forget. The world is a beautiful place and no day, no matter how noisy and angry, should pass without a song.