My colleague and I were walking out of SIA Sports Club after our daily gym sessions. As we were passing by the main lobby, which was 2-storey high with fantastic sunlight streaming in from the upper windows, we saw a bird hovering near the top.
To be exact, it was not hovering. It was continuously trying to fly out of the building, but was unfortunately stopped by the glass of the window. In fact, the only way out was the door of the lobby.
For a bird, “glass windows” are something foreign to them, and we have heard anecdotes from office workers in skyscrapers witnessing birds crash and die from colliding with the windows of the building.
The bird in this case was flying high and wanted to get out of the building, yet it failed to recognise that the glass was hindering its progress. To its little mind, there was an invisible obstacle between it and its desired end state.
Many of us had been in such a situation before.
We were doing rather well in our current state, and then we wanted to move on to another field, without lowering our current profile. However, there always seemed to be an invisible barrier stopping us from crossing over to “the other side”. Like the bird, the obstacle may be apparent for a 3rd party observer, but oblivious to the one involved.
If only the bird decides to fly lower, it can perhaps have a better chance at realising that the way to the other side is actually at the main entrance of the lobby. But it was persistent in maintaining its altitude.
Like the bird, if only we can put our feet down and lay lower than our current status, if only we are willing to change our thinking hats, then we can perhaps find an alternate route to the greener pasture that we saw when we were up high.
If not, we will perhaps be like the bird, trying in vain to fly through the glass, only to eventually fall down from fatigue, only to discover the exit as it lay on the floor of the main lobby, dying.
