“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” Walter Elias Disney.

He is one of my hero’s but I’ll get back to that later.

This past weekend was a “Phil” weekend. I’m blessed because I get weekends that a lot of dads don’t have the privilege to have. Alone, time to spend with my son. Since it was so cold in the Midwest,(I think the high wind chill is estimated at minus 20) we hunkered down in the hacienda and watched shows that only a son and dad would watch. Terminator, Smash Lab, you know, things that bring the little boy out of a dad.

Well there was a moment, while watching “Animal Planet” that gave me pin point laser focus on how life should be for me, and those around me.

I have always felt that one of the best ways to understand life is to study nature. It holds all the answers if we take the time to surround ourselves by it and learn. Fortunately for us we didn’t have to travel any further than my living room and of course channel 43 on my cable box. Yet, watching I unearthed a diamond of information.

Let me tell you how it went.

We were watching a naturalist doing something I try to regularly do. He was giving. I often find that I receive my best lessons after I have first offered alms. In this case bread – He was laying it out on a lawn for the birds. Within minutes (and with nothing more than a half a loaf of stale Wonder bread) he filled the lawn. As far as the birds were concerned there was abundance; you couldn't take a single step without hitting food. There was so much food that (I am sure) birds were migrating from across the plant for the feast, it was windfall for the feathered flock, it was a…well, there was a lot bread. You get the point.

Anyway, once the feast was laid he, the naturalist retreated out of site and just commented on avian behavior. This is what we observed.

(Literally) within a matter of seconds three starlings landed in the middle of the lawn, in the middle of the bread. You could see that two of the birds were very young and the third bird (obviously the mother) was feeding them from her beak. Suddenly and without warning the mother flew away. You could see (but the babies could not) that she had not flown far, just a hundred yards or so, onto a neighbor’s roof, but far enough away for the chicks to feel abandoned. The two babies looked at each other helplessly, as though in an instant they had not only lost their mother, they had also lost their supply of food.

You could see from their bewildered expressions ('where the **** has mom gone?!' 'Never mind mom, what about our bread?!'), that even though these two starlings stood in the middle of a lawn full of bread, they could not see a single slice. As far as they were concerned there was absolutely no bread on the lawn, even though they stood right in the middle of it.

It was amazing.

It stuck a cord with me because I immediately related this incident to so many people I personally know who feel as though they have nothing, even though they are surrounded by abundant potential. They feel as though they are starving, yet there is available sustenance everywhere, they feel broke even though there is money growing off the trees. I too have often felt exactly the same way; trapped, hungry, in debt, not realizing that the potential to be free, to eat and make money was literally right under my feet.

At times we all feel as though we have no potential and that if someone is not feeding us bread from their beak, then there is no bread! What I have learned and what I know is this; we are all standing in a garden full of bread. If we can't see it, it is not because it is not there (we know it is because so many other people are feeding themselves quite adequately), rather it is because we are not looking hard enough (or perhaps we are looking too hard!), we are too busy either blaming others for our lack or we are waiting for others to feed us because for one reason or another we haven't learned to feed ourselves….yet.

Back to the birds.

As I watched for a little longer I noticed that the baby starlings, getting hungrier by the minute and not quite sure where mom was (or if she was ever going to come back) stopped looking for her to feed them, and started to forage around the floor themselves.

Well, as I am sure you can imagine, a bit of bread led to a bit of bread led to a bit more bread and all of a sudden the starving infants were not only feeding themselves, they were actually satiated, and even though they perhaps thought their parent had abandoned them, she was actually watching from afar, aware that the long term survival of her off-spring depended not on her feeding them, rather it depended on them feeding themselves. And the only way that was going to happen was if she stopped feeding them, forcing them to find their own sustenance.

And here ends nature's lesson. When we take responsibility for our own sustenance a piece of bread will lead to a piece of bread, success will lead to success which leads to more success.

Eventually we realize that (if we look carefully enough) we are all actually standing in the very success we seek. Now back to Disney. “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

This past week someone that I have spent about three years grooming and developing programs (my second in comand) is literally flying the coop. My hope is that he will learn the lessons of the starlings…that there is plenty of abundance around, there always was. Now he has the courage to pursue them. I wish him well….

But now its time to wreck something with my son…. Maybe X-box’s Carbon’s street racing, you can never mow down enough newspaper stands racing ridiculously fast in some unnamed downtown metropolis!

Til next time…