Do You Trust Your Wings?

Do You Trust Your Wings?

A bird sitting in a tree is not afraid of the branch breaking
because her trust is not in the branch,
but in her own wings.”
– unknown

M. Scott Peck begins his classic book, The Road Less Travelled with a sentence we could discuss at length.  “Life is difficult,” he says. He goes on to say,“Once we truly know that life is difficult–once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

I believe this is because as we move along the paths of our lives, we struggle and we triumph; we face problems and we solve them.  We come to know that we can handle life’s difficulties.  We learn to trust our ability to solve problems and work our way through challenges.  We learn to trust our wings.

I think it is so important to impart this to our children. Barbara Coloroso says we protect children from suicide by teaching them there is no problem so great it cannot be solved.  How do we teach our children this?  We do this by allowing them to deal with age-appropriate problems they encounter in life, guiding them when they need support and affirming that they have done a good job in taking responsibility for and solving the problem. 

We ensure they have plenty of experience in triumphing over problems.  We teach them to trust their wings.

I suspect that we each arrive in this life with a measure of built-in fortitude and confidence for dealing with problems.  My son Alex seemed to have much of this.  While I often worried about problems with our business web site, he, our very young Webmaster, never did.  I can still see him sitting at the computer smiling with confidence that all would be well.  My daughter Natasha, too, is extremely capable of assessing a situation, knowing when to take action, what action to take and having the courage to take it.  Neither of them, even as young children, was intimidated by problems.  They have been and continue to be my teachers.  They trust their wings.

Do you trust yours?

Photo credit: DVIDSHUB

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About The Author


I have always loved writing and community building. I’ve written a book about healing and happiness, The Happy Place, as well as a Community Building book, Sounding the Drum: Community Building in the Digital Age,both available at any Amazon store. I’ve been through life changes that I thought were the end of my world, but I’m still here. You never know what will happen next. Isn’t that what makes life interesting?