[2021-07-19] What's wrong with being a chicken?
In his newsletter from last week, Atomic Habits author James Clear shared a parable from priest and therapist Anthony de Mello that I've continued to think about since I read it. As recounted in Song of the Bird, the story goes like this:
A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chickens and grew up with them.
All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked.
"That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbor. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we're chickens."
So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.
This parable could no doubt be interpreted in multiple ways. Perhaps we are to conclude that the eagle never lived up to his potential—living and dying as an earthbound chicken rather than gliding in graceful majesty as a king among birds.
But when I finished reading the story, my overwhelming thought was just the opposite. "What's wrong with being a chicken?" I asked myself.
Despite my success in climbing the corporate ladder, I do not expect my children or any other young people to follow my path. You see, I am keenly aware of the sacrifices I made to reach the level I did.
Five years ago, when deciding whether or not to become the assistant deputy minister of health communications, I wondered whether the demands of the job would be worth the rewards of filling such an important role. With my husband's support, I accepted the position, figuring that I could give it my all in the final five or so years of my career.
And then, four years in, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. At first, I wasn't even sure that I'd reach the five-year anniversary of my becoming an ADM.
Thankfully, my treatment appears to have gone well. With luck and science, I hope to be around for many more years to come, making my five-year plan a good choice in the end. But there are no guarantees.
Even before I was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, I believed that it was perfectly appropriate to take a slow and deliberate approach in moving up in one's career, pausing if necessary to ensure that one always struck the right balance between work and life.
I am lucky to have been born to humble beginnings, growing up on a farm where hard work and manual labour were valued as much as intellectual efforts. I faced no pressure to pursue a given field or to reach a certain level. I could have been anything I wanted.
I chose to go to university, to make a career in the federal Public Service, and to become an executive. Perhaps that makes me an eagle.
But just as I faced no pressure to be anything but who I was, I don't want my example to put pressure on anyone else to feel that they need to be anything but who they are. It's not necessary for us all to strive to be eagles. It is perfectly OK to be a chicken.
