Arctic Terns Taught Me About My Humanity
Grace In Action
At the beginning of the summer, we enrolled my son in a pre-college program for AI and Robotics. On the drive up to the college, we stopped at a small wildlife refuge along the shores of West Haven, CT. We spent a good hour walking along the beach and spying on different species of birds.
Along my walk, I saw something elegant and beautiful. I watched Arctic terns hover over shallow water, beating their wings fast, and then dive into the water. They were hunting fish, doing what Arctic terns do, what nature intended them to do. I saw grace in action. I saw the dance of life unfold before me.
We walked back to our car, dusted the sand off our bare feet, and drove onward. As I navigated the I-95 corridor to our destination, I couldn’t stop thinking about those birds. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had witnessed. The hovering and the diving.
I don’t know why this particular event resonated deeply with me, but it did.
These days I open my heart more. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I embrace becoming a weepy old man. One would think that living in this world would make me a hard and cranky old man, but I’ve found the opposite to be true.
I’ve found that my heart has become softer as I’m aging.
Some people would say that this is a weakness, I need to be hard and tough just to survive. Some people believe in hitting back twice as hard and others believe in making the first strike.
I wonder why these people exist, how did they get to where they are in the first place? How did they get so hard?
Birth. Growth. Mating. Parenting. Death. That seems to be the cycle for the majority of birds out there unless you’re a cowbird or a cuckoo. Brood parasitic birds tend to skip the parenting part.
That seems to be a “normal” pattern for the majority of us humans too, but we tend to overcomplicate things. I think we create problems that don’t exist to give ourselves an excuse for being a piece of shit.
It’s way too often that I read of one human perpetuating some sort of trauma on another human. Our lives are littered with it, mine included.
Ask any immigrant mother who had her child ripped away from her at the border, only never to see her child again.
Just ask any ex-Jehovah witness who has been shunned by their family.
Just ask any woman who has to utter #metoo.
Just ask any man who wants to grieve but is afraid to do so.
The list of trauma we humans experience and inflict on others is endless, and that’s a shame.
We could do better and be nobler, but we never rise to that occasion.
I still think of those birds after months have slipped past me. Words like grace, perfection, and reverence well up in me as I write this article.
Perhaps it’s the simplicity of what they are and what they were doing that appealed to me. There was no trauma, just birds doing bird things for their survival. That’s all.
And what is to become of us flawed humans? Is it our nature to continue to inflict trauma on each other? Is that what we are meant to be?
I say no.
Our nature is to be like those birds and soar high into the sky. Our nature is to open our hearts and leave all the trauma behind.
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