Patience or Pursuit?
My average word count has been creeping up these last few weeks, so I’m compensating this time by keeping it short.
Also, it’s spring break, and I’m taking one! Hopefully you are, too. These pauses in life’s routines allow the mind to relax, zoom out and find patterns that tend to get lost in the daily ground clutter.
So it was for me on Sunday afternoon, hiking through the awakening Kentucky forest.
From the still bare, but budding canopy, I heard the rising buzz of a northern parula’s zeee-zeee-zeee call. It was the first of the season. This tiny New World warbler would have just arrived from his winter home in southern Mexico.
A friend once described photography of these birds as a fool’s errand. With their soft gray backs and lemon-yellow throats, they are tiny—little feathered balls of constant, frenetic motion, plucking caterpillars from the undersides of the new spring leaves high in the treetops.
It is tempting to chase them from tree to tree, tripping over roots and rocks as you gaze upward, always a split-second late on the shutter. The inevitable result is lots of throw-away images and a bad case of “warbler neck.”
Although I am always inclined to active pursuit, I have learned that a better approach is to find a spot they are likely to find appealing, park yourself there, and wait. Let them come to you.
Conversely, if I want to see an Adelaide's warbler, close cousin to the parula, I’ll need a plane ticket to Puerto Rico. Although very similar in appearance and behavior, the Adelaide’s does not migrate. No amount of patience will pay off.
It got me thinking…
- What am I chasing that would be better achieved through patience?
- And what am I waiting for that is unlikely to manifest without decisive action?
Where will the deeper rhythms of life deliver what I’m looking for right to my doorstep, as inevitably as the warbler’s springtime return to the north?
Where should I position myself to maximize the odds of our paths intersecting?
And where do I need to take action to move something forward that simply isn’t going to happen on its own? In what areas do I need to mount a determined pursuit?
Ultimately the answer depends on what it is you’re looking for. Is it a northern parula that will come to you when the seasons change if you can put yourself in the right spot?
Or is it an Adelaide’s warbler that requires you to make something happen.
Sorting that out is often the hardest part, but that’s what breaks like these are good for. I hope you are taking one, too.
Until next time,
Greg
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