tiny bird

I am sitting on a wooded hillside, and nearby I see a tiny bird, hopping about from branch to branch. Now I see there are two or three of them. They're so small you might at first glance think they are a butterfly perhaps. And seeing these delightful, tiny birds reminds me that size does not matter.

The beauty of life does not lie in quantity, or volume. The tiniest things can be as beautiful, or more beautiful, than big things. And I feel sometimes we forget this, in our modern society, where we measure everything. The bigger the company, the more money it makes, the more followers someone has on Facebook or Twitter – all these numbers are indicating a quantity, but they tell us nothing of quality. They say nothing of beauty.

Some of the biggest corporations in the world are some of the ugliest organisations. There are famous people, with millions of followers on social media, who have nothing to add in the way of helping us human beings realise our beauty. And one of these tiny little birds, just one, so small, is enough to do just that. Its mere existence, showing its own beauty to us, is a reminder that we too are beautiful. Deep down inside there's a place in each of us that is undefiled.

And now as I speak the bird has come closer. It's green in colour. Ah, gorgeous. Hmm.

I wonder if you even heard it flying past just now, its tiny wings flapping fast. It came within a foot of me.

Life is beautiful, and we don't need big numbers to feel that, to realise that. Thank you, little bird, for this beautiful teaching.