I love Hummingbirds! Maybe I didn't say that perfectly or loud enough, so let me repeat - I love Hummingbirds. I see their sleekness, their business, their surety, all their colors, and it makes all the dopamine and serotonin in my brain smoothly and serenely yell at me to remain calm and smile. This allows light, color, beauty, and happiness to easily coalesce in my heart for a moment of sheer ecstasy! I want to believe Hummingbirds are nature's way of saying it's okay to be okay, feel good, and know that happiness is meant to be experienced.
Hummingbirds are out there where they should be, where they always will be. They thrive in being out there in that place where nature surrounds them, loves on them, cares for them, protects them, and yields to them everything they need. It's been a while since I've seen a Hummingbird because I've been complacent, willing to put the brakes on my mind and allowing it to become dull and as drab as drab can become as I held it captive here in awful stillness.
This stillness is called a sulk, a place where I throw a pity party, a place where anxiety and depression overwhelm me, confront me with everything I loathe and fear, showing me only the darkness of a space that lacks color. No Hummingbird ever entered a sulk. When I'm in a sulk, stagnancy wants me to stay, wants gravity to tether me here, but a mind, my mind, can only take so much - and thank God! From my recent sulk, my mind got up to stretch.
That stretch took my mind to a place far away from here, crossing these cornfields, taking me beyond the lady holding her torch, crossing a significant pond, move through a savanna full of big cats and Antilope to finally arrive at a place full of hard-working people, green woods, and some of the world's greatest coffee. It was here that I immediately saw my hummingbird.
She let me know of all the places she'd flown through as she darted here and there to let her fast mind quickly soak in the learning she required before she had to fly to her next destination. In the middle of the day, all the light that surrounded her allowed every one of her vast colors to fascinate me, flashing me like the many colors that dart and dance off a rotating disco ball from the 1970's. Of course, she mesmerized me as I felt stuck, hypnotically staring at her and her beauty. In every movement she made, in every expression on her lovely face, she quickly found a way to inform me of a Hummingbird that processed a lot of intelligence that while not so elegant, held a gritty, hard, and tough honesty. This showed me how silly it is to build up in my imagination an idea of what a Hummingbird ought to be. Hummingbirds, after all, were sent to this world by God to be individuals, no different than how each and every snowflake is a masterpiece designed by God to be different from every other masterfully created snowflake. I say that was a beautiful lesson and I was made happy for its learning.
As this Hummingbird gracefully danced, darting here and there, I realized how each movement she made was faster than my pitiful
thoughts could think. Every movement she made where well-practiced, thought out and planed in an instant in her mind that worked with the quick efficiency of a flash of lightning. As she moved in her dance, tiny pixies of lighted, colorful, beautiful fire were guided as by her knowing wings to move around her body. They moved in a way that seemed to defy both physics and gravity. When it seemed like momentum should cause them to fly away from her, they'd come right back. When they seemed like they should fly away from either her right or left, they'd come to a complete pause as they sometimes stacked up horizontally and sometimes vertically, defying gravity as these firefly pixies seemed to just float at her very command. Her dance touched me and made me happy.
Best of all, this Hummingbird enjoyed the attention. When I left off noticing her without saying goodbye, she used her gritty, hard, tough, and honest intelligence to show me how she also has a keen insight into the human condition by teaching me writers can have a sensitive soul and have their emotions act out in ways that are hyperbolic. I mean, whoever heard of an overly sensitive artist? I thought I wanted to lose that part of my life, but perhaps it just needs more cultivation - thinking.
In a droplet of water, in the tear sitting in the corner of my eye, this Hummingbird was a little distorted, but nonetheless, her beauty was magnified. In this, I was allowed to see light, color, beauty, and happiness in imperfection. You should know I'm smiling my happy smile and my heart wants to move while my mind wanted me to write this. I'm looking, I'll see this Hummingbird again.
As Always,
With Love and Grateful Peace,
Tod /only one d
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