Jonathan Seagull example essay topic

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom".

The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to which he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle!

A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare to let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure. But they cried the more, "Savior!" all the while clinging to the rocks, making legends of a Savior. This is life.

This is the sad and yet remarkable truth about life-about the ignorance of our human race and their closed minds, which when showed even a glimpse of the ultimate truth, will refuse to accept it and put it down to being the work of the "devil" or the "savior", which will seek to banish and ultimately crucify those who don't live within their rules. They forget that in fact there are no rules to life... Life is but an unlimited idea of freedom. Richard Bach through his novel "Jonathan Livingston seagull emphasizes this eternal truth. This book is proof that you don't have to write a thick novel to write a great novel. In just around a hundred pages, Richard Bach manages to capture the essence of being.

And the creature that he lets loose on this chase for reason and meaning is one that is... a seagull. People who make their own rules when they know they " re right... People who get a special pleasure out of doing something well (even if only for themselves)... people who know there's more to this whole "living" thing than meets the eye: they " ll be with Jonathan seagull all the way. Others may simply escape into a delightful adventure about freedom and" flight... Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight -- how to get from shore to food and back again", writes author Richard Bach in this allegory about the unique bird named Jonathan Livingston Seagull". When the other seagulls are perfectly happy living for food, flying only to be able to find food, Jonathan Livingston Seagull lived for flying itself, for mastering it.

Flight is indeed the metaphor that makes the story soar. Day after day, he strived towards perfecting his flying abilities. Eventually he became the first gull to reach terminal velocity at 214 M.P.H. and later flew the first acrobatics of any seagull on earth. This kind of thinking however, he found, was not the way to make one's self-popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting with the various intricacies of flight. In order to please those around him, he did try to give up his ambitions and dreams and lead a life as a "normal" gull.

His self-confidence sank. He started to think of himself as a mere gull, limited by his nature, not deemed to learn so much about flight and from that moment he vowed he would behave like the rest and make everyone happier. However, a sudden realization dawned upon him and he climbed 2000 ft above the sea and dashed into the night. His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary.

One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise. His defiance to the ways of the flock eventually leads to his banishment. He was condemned to live his life away from his flock, punished for his brilliance and ambition. In spite of this, he continued his quest for learning. He believed it was every gull's right to fly, to reach the ultimate freedom of challenge and discovery.

He was learning because deep inside he had a higher vision of himself. He was driven to dig deeper, climb higher, and apply himself with more vigor for a reason not quite understandable, even by him. He learned from all of his searching and trying that he could do anything, if he wanted it badly enough and just went for it. Jonathan, during his quest for knowledge, said, "How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's a reason to live! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

We can be free! We can learn to fly!" What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had paid. His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and see. Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long and fine life indeed. This book is not merely about the flight of one seagull, but of our hearts, our very spirits and imaginations and dreams. We too, can lift ourselves out of the monotony of our daily lives.

We too, can fly, despite lack of wings. One-day two gulls came for him and Jonathan left the old Great Mountain and the magnificent silver sky where he had learnt so much with the realization that he was not bound by his body and that he could still go further. He found himself in a wonderful new place, and he thought he had finally reached heaven. On asking Sullivan, his instructor in the new place why there weren't more of them there in this heavenly place, he got a reply, which may be said to be our reality in a nut shell. He said there were thousands and thousands of gulls who went from one world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgetting right away where they had come from, not caring where they were headed, living for the moment. It took more than 10,000 lives before they even got the idea was more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock.

And then another hundred lives until they began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that their purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The same rule holds for us now. We too, go about life so wrapped in our petty issues that we forget the true essence or our being. We too, forget that there is more to life than surviving and becoming powerful in society. We forget to dream... We choose our next world through what we learn in this one.

Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome". The gist of our life can be summarized in this dialogue between Jonathan and Chiang, an elder... Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is there no such place as heaven?"No, Jonathan, there is no such place.

Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect."You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there".

You are in Heaven when you have achieved your grandest vision about yourself. Heaven is when you realize that you too are but an idea of the great god, and idea of unlimited freedom. So the way to "get to" heaven is set aside all barriers, break all chains and cast aside all limitations. We must only believe in our grandest dreams... our grandest thoughts. And our grandest thoughts are those, which bring out the god in us... Those which are synonymous to truth, joy and love which are in fact synonymous to each other, as each one leads to the other.

As Jonathan said", Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too... ". He told his fellow gulls to set aside all laws, as the only law was that which led to freedom, there was no other. Chiang further taught him that he could travel across space and time with the speed of thought. He could go to any place and every place he wished to is he believed he could.

The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two-inch wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time and to fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived. This is essentially true, coz in this cosmic universe dimensions like space and time are but created realities, which can be overcome with the speed of thought. So you overcome space, all you have left is Here, overcome time, all you have left is Now. Our whole reality is here and now. Thus every place and every moment is heaven because there is just one eternal now and one everlasting here.

As time went past, Jonathan found himself thinking more and more about the earth from which he had come. He thought about all those gulls surviving in ignorance and wondered if their was a gull back there, who like him, was struggling to break out of his limits. He longed to back and show them the way of life, even if his message was heard by just a few. His mindset, he set out to teach those on the ground how to see a thousand miles ahead... His first student was Fletcher Land Seagull, another determined and ambitious gull.

Together they started their learning, and by the end of three months, six other gulls had joined them. They would fly during the day and at night; Jonathan would try and teach then about their existence. A month later, much to the amazement of the Flock, the outcasts started practicing right above them. Gradually other gulls also saw the wonder and amazement of this new idea of flight, for the joy of flying. They too, joined Jonathan. They were at first unsure of themselves, saying that they could not fly like Jonathan, that he was special and gifted and divine and above other birds, that he was in fact the son of the Great Gull himself.

Exasperated, Jonathan explained to them that he or flet 5 cher or any of the other gulls were no more gifted than them. The only difference was that they had begun to understand and remember who they really are and practice it. He said that this kind of flying has been there all the time, to be learnt by anybody who wishes to and that it had nothing to do with being ahead of time. A week later, Fletcher collided against a cliff. Deciding to stay back and help the flock instead of passing into a higher level of consciousness, Fletcher opened his eyes. At this the Flock became wild, once calling Jonathan god, for bringing Fletcher back to life, and the next instant calling him Devil who had come to break up the flock.

Jonathan gently took him away, and then Fletcher asked him how he could still love a flock that had tried to kill him and how he could come back to help them. At that Jonathan replied that he didn't love the hatred and the evil, but he saw the Real Gull, the good in every one of them and helped them to see in themselves. That is what love is all about. Similarly we too, believe that there are some "chosen ones" who are better than us and who are god. That is not true. The same happened with Christ, Buddha and all great teachers.

They were declared as god, with the power to bring people back to life, and when the people felt threatened by them, they tried to crucify them. They fail to see that they too can be like them, they are in fact like them, all they have to do is remember who they really are. Jonathan went on to say that Fletcher didn't need him anymore and that he was now ready to become a teacher himself. Saying this he disappeared, and Fletcher dragged himself into the sky and begun with a new group of students. While teaching them, he suddenly saw them for who they really were, and loved what he saw. He saw no limits.

He saw that his race had begun to learn.