The Eagle in the Barnyard

There is an old story I love. A man found a baby eagle that had fallen from its nest, and he raised it in his barnyard, among the chickens and the turkeys and the old gray donkey. The eagle ate the scratch feed the chickens ate. It pecked at the dirt the way they did. It flapped a few feet off the ground and then settled back down, because that was all it had ever seen another bird do.

The eagle grew up certain he was a barnyard bird. Why would he think otherwise? Everyone around him kept their feet on the ground, so he kept his there too.

One day he looked up and saw a magnificent bird floating high on the wind, wings wide, riding the sky. “What is that?” he asked. “That is an eagle, the king of the birds,” said an old hen. “But do not give it another thought. You and I, we belong down here.” So the eagle looked back at the dirt, and went on pecking.

I think about this story often, because so many of us are that eagle. We are not staying small because we lack the wings. We are staying small because we were raised among people who never used theirs, and we never thought to question it. We learned to peck at the ground from birds who could not fly either.

But here is the part of the story I will not let you skip. Your wings work. They have worked the whole time. Nobody clipped them. You simply have not had anyone stand beside you, point at the open sky, and say it plainly. So let me be that voice. You are an eagle. The ground was never where you belonged. Stretch your wings.