The Lemming, The Eagle

Eaglets, their parents lost to a hunter's rifle, hatched in a nest at the top of a tall cliff.
They hatched into loneliness, their cries unheard -- save for the ears of a small lemming.
This mother lemming had co-opted and fur-lined the nest for her own brood - but, as all good mothers do, brought the eaglets half-chewed worms that boiled from the rain-soaked earth.
She and her growing brood cared for the chicks as if they were their own. But they did not know how to teach their brother eaglets to fly, not knowing themselves. So the eaglets clumsily hopped along the top of the cliff behind their adopted lemming family.
Sometimes the eaglets sat and gazed at seabirds wheeling above them in the sky.
"See how feathery and long their arms are!" one would say, "just like ours!" -- and both brothers knew something was wrong, but not quite what.
Then one day a great, inland wind blew over the cliffs to the sea, and the lemmings hunkered down in a thicket. But the two eaglets, now nearly full-grown, were too large to hunker in the thicket with them.
The wind caught in their feathers, and blew them over the cliff.
One of the brother eaglets curled into a small, still ball, like a lemming, and plummeted into the sea.
But his brother eaglet cast his fears, and himself, into the face of the winds, and opened wide his arms. As his wings unfurled to their full, majestic span, they caught the currents of the sky.
And, become an eagle at last, he soared over land and sea, soon to master all.
Thus, when pushed off a cliff, try to fly. -- via Babylon 5

September 14, 2013, excerpt from The Parables of Reason © 2007-2013 (Chapter 3, "Emotion's Mastery"), by Frank H. Burton, Executive Director, The Circle of Reason.

Aphorism of the Week

Do not conquer the mountain -- just climb it.

Dedicated to the new U.S., Russian, and Syrian diplomatic initiative to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons.