There is something special to be said about a girl who believes that her life is going to be wonderful. Not because everything is perfect, not because she’s already experiencing it, but because she simply refuses to believe that the best parts of her life have already happened.
“To have faith is to have wings.” – The Little White Bird by J.M. Barrie
I have always loved this quote. Perhaps it’s because whenever I’ve been asked about what super power I would want, I always chose flight. Or, maybe, it’s the simplicity of it.
Let’s think about birds for a second. Funny I know, because all you hear lately is “she’s a bird” or “don’t be a bird.” But truly think about a bird. It doesn’t spend its morning contemplating if the wind will cooperate, or whether its wings are strong enough. It simply has faith. Therefore, “to have faith is to have wings.” Eventually, a bird is forced to spread its wings and fly. Not because it knows exactly where it’s going, but because that’s what its wings are designed to do. Fly.
When did we stop allowing ourselves to have that same kind of faith? Somewhere between childhood and adulthood we adopted a sense of practicality. Our new hobbies became managing expectations and preparing for disappointment. We started treating uncertainty as a warning rather than an invitation. Before booking the trip, we think of all the reasons why we shouldn’t go. Before allowing ourselves to fall in love, we think of all the possibilities in which it could end. We spend so much time trying to gurantee a soft landing and we ultimately forget that we were meant to fly.
This doesn’t mean that every decision will be the right one, or that every person will stay. Not every dream is going to unfold exactly as we imagine. Sometimes we’ll fly in the wrong direction. Sometimes we’ll lose our way entirely, and we’ll have to find our way back. The key is knowing that perfect faith doesn’t mean knowing you’ll never fall. Maybe, it means trusting that falling won’t be the end of you.
So let’s have wings. Let’s believe in the possibility of wonderful things happening before they even do. There is a whole world waiting beyond what we already know. I’d like to think our wings are capable of taking us somewhere extraordinary, with the right amount of faith.