Stories

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

~ Stephen King

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I like that quote.  It is from "The Shawshank Redemption."  I think that all birds - like all people - have something special to offer.  Their lives can be told in a series of stories.  There probably is a single great theme to most peoples' stories.  An undercurrent or overarching idea - one that ties a person's whole life together.

Maybe we know - on some level - what that theme is in our own lives.  Maybe we never know.  Maybe no one ever knows until a person is gone what the message of his or her life was.

But maybe some are evident.

In a way it doesn't matter if we know a story or not.  We always make up our own, don't we?  Like in the image above.  What is that about?  Is there a story for the bird or is the fact that I constructed this image - does that make whatever this means a part of my story?

"Did you hear about that chick who tried to steal the state trooper's vehicle?"

"Yeah.  That was Tippi.  She was always destined to be a jailbird."

(pause)

So, I don't think you learn anything about me at all from this.  You just learn a little bit about that bird.