Do you ever feel stuck?


Look closely, you may find pearls in the grass.
Every day, when I drive onto the beautiful campus where I teach, I see guinea fowl running through the grass. Their tiny heads are a startling flash of colour; their bodies are pearl spotted, feathered plumpness. I love their silliness but had not given them much thought until a friend made a comment about them.

She told me, that in captivity, guinea fowl lose their distinctive blue markings. The metaphor caught my attention at once. In captivity, we lose the brightness of our soul. We are held captive by the needs of others, by our own self-limiting beliefs and often by circumstance.

I facilitate a course called ‘Investment in Excellence’. The first module deals with this question: Do you ever feel stuck? I know very few people who don’t feel stuck somewhere in their lives. What ‘unsticks’ us?  I think it’s pain. When the pain or dissonance caused by the situation we're in gets too intense, we must move or die.

Back to the guinea fowl, as much as I searched for a reference to the bird losing its colour in captivity, I couldn’t find it. If you have a better source, please let me know.  I did, however, find this story. The guinea fowl is classified as Numida Meleagris. Meleagros was a Greek prince whose four sisters were turned into fowls. (I know, foul fate.) The Queen blamed Meleagros for what had happened to his sisters. The grief was too much to bear and so he killed himself. (The Ancient Greeks were always doing stuff like that. I’m surprised the Greek nation survived.) The sisters were so distraught that they cried until their tears became the pearl-like markings that we see on the  feathers of guinea fowl today. (They really must have cried him a River Styx.)

What should we fear? I fear the absence of the ‘pain’ that will lift me out of the dark hole of stuckness and towards a more exquisite world. I look back over my life and value the pearl tears that shine in my plumage. I look at those around me and applaud those who share the pearls of their humanity. I draw courage from those who dare to show their vulnerability.

‘Go upright amongst those who are on their knees
Among those with their backs turned and toppled in the dust.
You were saved not in order to live,
You have little time, you must give testimony.
Be courageous when the mind deceives you, be courageous.
In the final account only this is important.

From The Envoy of Mr Cogito by Zbigniew Herbert


Wear your pearls with courage. Give testimony, like the guinea fowl.

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