“Ok…all is clear…I’m back in a good mood again!”
Why are we forced to announce how we feel? In an age where children can act up and get away with it, adults are punished by their cohorts for doing nothing more than expressing. It’s become illegal to say, “Stop treating me like a dog.” Actually, I wouldn’t mind being treated like my dogs…Sami, Harold, Sophia and MJ are well groomed and loved more than a fresh cut rose on a wedding day.
We’ve all been there…a strange unexpected twist of fate lands your ten toes in an uneven pile of professional manure and there’s not a soul nearby in the mood to help bail you out.
I once worked with a brilliant General Manager who stood up in a meeting and said, “I understand that Arroe might have gone overboard with his emotions but my concerns fall into the category of which one of you pushed him relentlessly without considering how it would affect the end result?”
His solution was for me to tattle on the bad kids pushing, shoving and kicking others during recess.
Buddhist Monk Thick Nhat Hahn tends to put more faith in a different solution, finding peace in a separate end result. Exposing the evils of others creates a larger wave of destruction. My problem is simple; those who know me have learned there’s an amazing amount of passion put into anything and everything I touch. When the flow of passion is interrupted causing me to deliver a project less than I see, feel and hear…quality suffers and I can’t stand the idea of putting my signature on a performance that resembles second, third or fourth best.
Dylan was right, the times are changing…today’s best is yesterdays worst. We’ve allowed the circles we keep to support a system of bad habits connected to an end result that resembles accepted defeat, “That’s ok God gave me tomorrow to do a better job.”
I can’t stand the word lazy! My stepfather Joe constantly accused my child self of being everything it represents in a Webster’s dictionary. And yet today, through his shared visions, what he saw in me is today’s accepted work ethics.
The solution? Everybody must raise pigeons! You can have twirlers, messengers, fancy ones with brilliant beautiful tails, males that coo coo coo at 2am or big old fat ones that hang out under overpasses. It doesn’t matter! You can learn a lot about life raising pigeons.
Pigeons can come across pretty stupid; they sit on telephone lines in a row of ten, a beautiful hawk flies by, picks one of them up and the other nine don’t wobble, choke or burp up a seed, they sit there and reminisce what Bobby the wanna be chicken was like before his final coo coo coing. Tell me that’s not today’s business world! We’ve become numb to the cut back movement.
I spent the majority of my younger chapters doing nothing more than studying a pigeon’s behavior in public. They eat rocks because it helps them digest food. How many times have you found yourself choking over an event at work and couldn’t digest the day…what was your process of pushing it through? How often do you take it home and take it out on the other pigeons?
Pigeons don’t put up with another pigeons non caring way of living. They’ll raise that right wing high in the air and kick your beak into next week. I once had a pigeon called Broken Wing…some guys from the stepfather’s job shot him down and Joe knew who could mend that cockroach from the sky back to a great life. Oh boy, the bird hood didn’t like Broken Wing, they felt invaded…how dare an injured dude from another nation of birds think about pushing their way into a free breakfast, lunch and dinner!
I invited peace by placing Broken Wing next to a pigeon sitting on a nest…pigeons love to love and nothing says I love the world more than a momma cuddling up to a couple of future coo-ers. Slowly I introduced the injured with the stranded…once on those eggs, you ain’t going no where. At first the mother was, “WTF” but through careful maneuvering the relationship was created when the human figure introduced cracked corn to them…it was a treat for being nice. Which you don’t get any more on the job…it’s always, “Here! This too! Here! I need it by 3pm!”
Pigeons wouldn’t put up with that mess on the floor. Mack Daddy the giant blue with a speck or two of white on his chest would stand in the center of the pigeon circle and go into a dance that seemed symbolic yet commanding…I honestly believe he was trying to convince the others to vote the bad mood makers off the pigeon island.
Pigeons are powerful. A chicken once got up into the coop; they eat everything, including babies. I walked into the hen house the next day and spotted six pigeons standing over the now gone chicken. I often wonder if I was raising Mafia pigeons. No way! I never once heard, “For get about it coo, coo.”
When it’s bitterly Montana cold pigeons set aside their indifferences and huddle. When they take note of a human who’s low on luck or lonely due to nobody believing in their efforts to move forward, pigeons are giving in the way of flying to the cold surface of the ground and looking up at the human as a way of symbolizing the spirit of togetherness. "Dude, you aren't that low...look at me down here." They sing, they dance and they tell tiny pigeon jokes. They come back every day until the injured human is back to laughing again.
I raise doves today…I call them my Jazz. No matter how thick the cloud or thin the desire is to reach for new levels of success…their self created songs have a way of cutting through the bulkiest of walls to invite fresh sunlight to dreams preparing to be born.
Pigeons were once humans filled with amazing amounts of love and forgiveness then sent back to earth to collect more feathers to become stronger angels. Kind of like the Boy Scouts...fist you have to be a Cub then a Webelo and so on.
The next time someone shoves you toward a state of anger…take your view off their eyes and place it on the path a pigeon flies. Never react to someone’s actions…softly whisper a coo coo coo and the world will begin to sing with you.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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