Hummingbird lesson (NGT)

September 2006
Carmel, California

While staying at a friend’s house, enjoying her lovely garden, surrounded by green everywhere and watching the many hummingbirds who frequent the space, I stopped to watch one hummingbird who was sitting on a low branch in a small tree. He must have sat there for at least five to ten minutes. Not only was I surprised to see it resting for such a long time, as I thought hummingbirds were always busy feeding due to their very high metabolism, but it was singing up a storm, and I didn’t realize hummingbirds could make so much noise!

After about five minutes of this adorable little bird chirping away at an almost constant pace, I figured I’d just listen, as if maybe it was ‘talking to me’. I have learned to listen more and think less while in nature. The story I heard in my thoughts was that when you have been through intense periods of learning and growth in your life, in a sense feeding lots of new information to your mind, you need to take time to digest it, allowing your whole being, body, mind and spirit, to integrate it into your Being and your life. This made perfect sense to me as I had just finished five months of traveling to many natural places, getting tons of stories and information and writing about all that I’d learned. It was no wonder that I was so tired all of a sudden and just felt like resting.

After about five minutes of me ‘listening’ to the hummingbird, it finally went to visit a couple more flowers and then flew up to the top of a larger tree, one in which it could see a much higher and wider view of the entire garden. This was almost as if to show me that when you allow yourself to take the time to rest and integrate what you‘ve learned, only then can you get a better, clearer perspective of what lies ahead and where your path might lead you next.