Within minutes of arriving home in Berkshire on a recent Sunday evening after seeing my family in South Wales for the weekend, I went into the garden to refill the bird feeders and their water bath. As I came back towards the house, I saw the sad sight of a dead magpie next to the wall, underneath the kitchen window. It couldn’t have been there long, bless it.
I picked it up by one of its feet and put it on the lawn. The thought of ‘recycling’ its body to be taken by one of the local red kites, another raptor, or a fox seemed like an appropriate move by me. As I picked it up, the following 2 thoughts came to mind: ‘Aren’t dead birds bad luck?’ and ‘Touching a magpie? One magpie? One dead magpie? Oh no!’
I placed it on the grass, with more attention on feeling sad for its demise than the bad-omen thoughts I’d just had, and went back indoors.
The next morning, the bird was still on the lawn, and I wanted to give it more respect. So I put on my gardening gloves, picked it up and placed it in the undergrowth of the one corner of my garden I let go un-tended – for biodiversity. I came back inside and thought nothing more of it.
That day, Monday, was one of those days that if something could go wrong, it did. (Ok, minor exaggeration – my health was unaffected, and a meteorite didn’t come down to destroy planet Earth, but you know what I mean).
Every business proposal that had been out there for weeks or months turned from a ‘maybe – give me a week to think about it’ to a ‘no’. More work stuff. And cooking stuff. Shower gel bottle stuff. Blown lightbulb in the bathroom stuff. Lost 2 hours of writing an article by not saving it kind of stuff. If I were flipping a coin and wanted it to come up tails, I hit 20 heads in a row. Yeah, that kind of day.
As I sat that evening and mulled over the day’s bad luck, I thought that at least that’s all the bad luck out of the way for a while. It was noticeable that my spirits remained high and took the day of ‘all oysters and no pearls’ in my stride. That magpie though… ‘Who knows’, I thought.
Tuesday dawned. I’d plugged my car in overnight to be charged. It hadn’t. Something in the home-charging system wasn’t working. I made coffee and checked my emails. My inbox held another coin that came up heads. That coin was one I’d forgotten about. Still, the bad news was incoming – a new day wasn’t stopping its flow. While I can’t remember if much else went wrong after I’d figured out how to fix the home car-charger fault, no coins came up tails either. The rest of the week was much the same, no big bad news, but no re-balance came in the ‘Wyn Morgan world of misfortune/fortune’ either.
That Friday, as soon as my final client call was done, I closed the computer and vowed to turn myself off until Monday too. I sat in the garden a glass of Woodford Reserve Double Oaked bourbon in hand, and looked up at the sky. And I looked around. And I looked ALL around. There was a depth to my vision. More than normal. It was super 3-D. Sometimes what I look at through my eyes might as well not be there, my eyes have rolled back to stare inside my skull. Sometimes what I look at through my eyes looks like a poster. Vivid, but 2-D. Sometimes what I look at through my eyes has depth: the distance between my 2 eyes provides a one-inch gap that my brain turns into that depth perception: so useful in picking things up, driving a car, and flipping coins. Regardless of which side up they land.
And this time, with added depth. Super HD. Vivid colours, well as much as the missing cones at the back of my eyes that make me colourblind will allow. But so different from my ‘usual’ picture of the outside world. My mind was at ease. Full ease. Not asleep. Super-wide-awake. Clear. And this was before I took the first sip of bourbon, so that can’t take the credit!
I mused over the past 6 days. One of those weeks. I could have blamed it on the bad luck from touching the one-for-sorrow dead magpie. I could have blamed it on me. That I suck at life, at work, at doing things, at doing anything right. And I would have, not long ago. I’d have spiralled, tailspin-crashed into the black abyss that tore at my soul, and clawed any quantum of hope away from my consciousness.
Yet, here I was. In awe of what I was seeing through my eyes. The same trees. The same grass. The same sky. Looking more alive than I could remember.
With my mind in this much ease, my state so calm and high, everything looks as it is. No thought filter.
Events don’t always go as I plan them to. I’m ok regardless. ‘Real OK’ – not some clever affirmation to try to tell myself I am. No – ‘real OK’.
In a different state, things can look personal.
In a different state, things can look ‘outside-in.’
In this state, everything looks as it is. And I see with philosophical eyes.
Nothing can be blamed on the magpie, nothing can be blamed on me. Anyone who flips enough coins will have them fall the way they wish they didn’t twenty times in a row. Statistically, somewhere between 20 and an infinite number of flips, it is a cast-iron certainty.
I relaxed even more. I savoured the evening. In gratitude for being able to take in this small corner of the universe, in all its wonder.
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