Grounded Crow

but still cawing about three superpower verbs

Image: AI-generated using Microsoft Bing.

Dear readers,

Happy October from the bird’s nest! 🍂🪹🐦‍⬛🍁

Do y’all love a fresh new month as much as I do?! Though empty now, those 31 calendar boxes are vibrationally pulsing with possibilities!

At the end of each month I review my journal and engagement calendar, and something that often stands out are the notes I jotted down about various bird and nature sightings.

Amazingly, in the past year I witnessed this remarkable occurrence on two different occasions: A group of crows chasing a hawk across the sky!

Even though crows are smaller than their predators, such as hawks, eagles, and owls, they boldly and fearlessly chase away those bigger birds!

The more we learn about crows, the more astounding these smart beings become. Did you know that crows actually have regional dialects, with differences in their languages, just like humans? That is one fact in this short article: “8 Reasons Why Crows Are Awesome”.

Listening to the cawings of crows is such a thrill for me. How about you? If you haven’t heard crows for a while, you can listen to them in this one-minute video:

Contrary to those bold crows in flight, chasing after their hawk predators, I myself feel like a grounded crow. A few years ago I wrote this poem:

I am a cawing crow

who has been grounded.

No clearance for flight

anytime soon

if ever.

🐦‍⬛

Let go of feathers

like trees let go of autumn leaves.

🐦‍⬛

Let go

Let go

Let go.

🐦‍⬛

*caw.*

🐦‍⬛

(The feathers represented her dreams and disappointments.)

🐦‍⬛

Whether or not we live with chronic illnesses (physical and/or mental), we all encounter feelings of disappointment at times.

Have you experienced any soul-crushing disappointments? I certainly have. For instance, at the end of 2019, I made a list of the disappointments, from just that one year, and it was two pages long!

How to integrate the disappointments of life without being consumed by the griefs?

Two of the main strategies, which are so often repeated they have become clichés — Gratitude and Acceptance — actually do help us to ease our sorrows.

But gratitude and acceptance are not static nouns which we ever achieve with finality. Rather, they are erratic verbs which we ongoingly engage to elevate ourselves.

Whenever I get stuck dwelling on a certain disappointment, such as not being able to live on my own right now, if I consciously shift my attention to making a gratitude list, then my mood improves radically.

The word “radical” comes from the Latin radix, meaning “root” so we could think of a radical amelioration of our mental state as returning us to our roots — to our deeper, wiser selves.

In our deeper selves acceptance comes naturally.

My monkey mind might be spinning around like a compact disc, resisting my current situation, but when I can stop all of those anxious mental tracks, and calm down, then I am better able to say, “Okay, this is how things are, and I have to accept things as they are — again and again.”

Accepting things as they are, and feeling gratitude for as many things as we can — these tools may not give us exactly what we desire, but they help us to feel happier on the regular.

When someone asked the late Zen Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh what they could do to help others, he replied, “Be a happy person.”

Feeling happiness, and sharing happy energies with others, is something we can each do, whether or not we live with chronic illnesses.

Being happy is another variable verb. We do not achieve happiness once and for all, but rather we practice cultivating as many small happinesses as we can, every day.

Whenever we feel the pain of life’s disappointments, let us boldly activate these three superpower verbs: Acceptance, Gratitude, and Being Happy.

I may not be flying fearlessly like crows chasing a hawk, but I can still caw! Thank you for listening to these caw-ings. I hope you enjoy many happinesses today.

With a happy, grateful mind,

Teja Ray

✨🐦‍⬛✨ ✨🐦‍⬛✨ ✨🐦‍⬛✨ ✨🐦‍⬛✨ ✨🐦‍⬛✨ ✨🐦‍⬛✨

Thanks for reading Crow Caw-ings! ✨🐦‍⬛✨

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