Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Practice makes perfect. But are we machines that we are striving for perfection? Shouldn't it be practice makes better. The more we practice, the better we get.

Good morning fellow toastmasters. Today I want to share the story of Jonathan Livingston, a seagull. Seagulls are not known for their flying. but Jonathan wanted to fly. 

He wanted to push the boundaries of what flying meant. So he practiced day and night. The first thought in this head when he woke up was to find way to fly better and fly faster. He spent his days just doing that. This obsession with flying made it difficult for him to fit in with his flock. Where his parents and siblings were content in finding food, Jonathan loved flying for its own sake. This attitude of his made him a suspect, his parents pressured him to conform to society.

This lack of support and after a lot of failures Jonathan decided to quit and live the life of an ordinary seagull. At this point he had a vision, an epiphany: if he few on his wing tips he could fly faster. Jonathan was able to attain a speed of over 200 miles per hour. Jonathan is overjoyed, he returns to his flock, excited and eager. He wants to share his knowledge with his flock, but to his dismay, the flock kicked him out. Now he was an outcast shunned by this community.

Jonathan thought, by learning to fly, seagulls could lift themselves out of ignorance, and find themselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. If we could learn to fly, we could be free! What he had hoped for his flock, he gained for himself, and he was not sorry for what he had lost. Boredom, fear and anger are the reasons that a person's life is short and with those gone he can live a long infinite life.

One day a pair of gulls came to take him to another realm where he could be with his own kind. So, this is heaven, he thought. Heaven was just another plane of existence. A place where he was understood. He could continue to grow and learn. But this place seemed empty. "Where is everybody?" Jonathan, the place where you are at only one-in-a-million make it here. Countless of lives have gone through before we even got the first idea that is there more to life then eating, or flighting or sleeping. Slowly we find the purpose of life, the life that leads to perfection. We choose our next world through what we have learned in this one. This pursuit and then attainment of perfection is what heaven is.

So, is there no place called heaven? Heaven is not a place nor is it time. Heaven is being perfect. Perfection doesn't have limits. A person who scorns perfection for the sake of life goes nowhere. Those who put aside life for the sake of perfection go everywhere. The trick is to stop seeing oneself trapped inside a limited body. The trick is to know that our mind is limitless, and it can go everywhere at once across space and time. Fear of learning is what holds us back from heaven.

Finally I would like to share a quote from the book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a story" by Richard Bach - “The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.”

Jonathan Livingston Seagull : Richard Bach : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive