Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Because they were curious, they began experimenting with flight, though they never used that word. “It’s not flight,” they’d assure themselves over and again, “It’s just a way of finding what’s true.” So, in rejecting the “Students” they became students themselves. In rejecting the name of Jonathan Seagull, they practiced the message he had brought to the Flock.

This was no noisy revolution; there was no shouting, no waving of banners. But individuals like Anthony Seagull, for instance, not fully grown into the feathers of adulthood, began asking questions.

“Now look,” he had told his Official Local Student, “the birds who come to hear you every Tuesday come for three reasons, don’t they? Because they think they’re learning something; because they think that putting another pebble on the Cairn is going to make them holy; or because everybody else expects them to be there. Right?”

“And you have nothing to learn, my nestling?”

“No. There’s something to learn, but I don’t know what it is. A million pebbles can’t make me holy if I don’t deserve it, and I don’t care what the other gulls think about me.”

“And what is your answer, nestling?” ever so slightly shaken by this heresy. “How do you call the miracle of life? The Great-Gull-Jonathan-Holy-Be-His-Name said that flight . . .”

“Life isn’t a miracle, Official, it’s a bore. Your Great Gull Jonathan is a myth somebody made up a long time ago, a fairy tale that the weak believe because they can’t stand to face the world as it is. Imagine! A seagull who could fly two hundred miles per hour! I’ve tried it, and the fastest I can go is fifty, diving, and even then I’m mostly out of control. There are laws of flight that cannot be broken, and if you don’t think so, you go out there and try it! Do you honestly believe—truly, now—that your great Jonathan Seagull flew two hundred miles per hour?”

“And faster,” the Official said in perfect blind faith. “And taught others to do so.”

“So goes your fairy tale. But when you can show me that you can fly that fast, Official, then I’ll begin listening to what you have to say.”

There was the key and Anthony Seagull knew it the instant he said the words. He didn’t have answers, but he knew that he would gratefully, gladly lay down his life to follow any bird who could demonstrate what he was talking about, show him just a few answers in life that worked, that brought excellence and joy into everyday living. Until he found that bird, life would remain gray and bleak, illogical, without purpose; every seagull would remain a coincidental collection of blood and feathers pointed toward oblivion.

Anthony Seagull went his own way, as did more and more other young birds, rejecting the ritual and ceremony that encrusted the name of Jonathan Seagull, sad at the futility of life but at least honest with themselves, brave enough to face the fact that it was futile.

Then one afternoon Anthony was flapping along above the sea, thinking blankly that life is pointless and since pointless is by definition meaningless then the only proper act is to dive down into the ocean and drown. Better not to exist at all than to exist like a seaweed, without meaning or joy.

It all made sense. It was pure logic, and Anthony Seagull had all his life tried to abide by honesty and logic. He had to die sooner or later anyway, and he saw no reason to prolong the painful boredom of living.

So he pushed over, from two thousand feet, into a dive straight toward the water, coming down at nearly fifty miles per hour. It was oddly exhilarating, to have made the decision at last. He had found the one answer that made any sense at all.

Along about midway into his death-dive, with the sea tilting and growing huge beneath him, there was a great whistling roar directly past his right wing and he was passed in flight by another seagull . . . passed as though he had been standing on the beach. The other bird was a white streak blazing down, a blurred meteor from space. Anthony, startled, bent his wings into dive-brakes and wondered helplessly at the sight.

The blur dwindled softly toward the sea, flashing down at the wave tops, and then bent into a hard pullup, beak pointing right straight back up into the sky, and rolled. A long vertical slow roll, twisting off into

an impossible full circle in the air.

Anthony stalled, watching; forgot where he was, stalled again. “I swear,” he said out loud, “I swear that was a seagull!” He turned at once toward the other bird, who apparently hadn’t noticed him. “HEY!” he called, as loud as he could. “HEY! WAIT UP!”

The gull pitched immediately up on one wing, moving at tremendous speed, blazed back toward him. Anthony in level flight, pulled hard into a vertical bank, and stopped suddenly in the air, as a racing-skier stops at the end of a downhill run.

“Hey!” Anthony was all out of breath. “What . . . what are you doing?” It was a silly question, but he didn’t know what else to say.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” the stranger said in a voice as clear and friendly as the wind. “I had you in sight all the time. Just playing . . . I wouldn’t have hit you.”

“No! No, that’s not it.” Anthony was awake and alive for the first time in his life, inspired. “What was that?”

“Oh, some fun-flying, I guess. A dive and a pullup to a slow roll with a rolling loop off the top. Just messing around. If you really want to do it well it takes a bit of practice, but it’s a nice-looking thing, don’t you think?”

“It’s, it’s . . . beautiful, is what it is! But you haven’t been around the Flock at all. Who are you, anyway?”

“You can call me Jon.”

JonathanLivingstonSeagull.com

The last chapter is not an amazing story, though it feels like it.

How do adventures suddenly appear in one’s mind? Writers who love their work say that the mystery is a part of the magic. No explanation.

Imagination is an old soul. Someone whispers in the spirit, speaks softly of a bright world and the creatures there with joys and sorrows and despairs and victories, the tale finished and beautiful except for the words. Writers swirl images to match the action they see, remember the dialogue from beginning to the end. Simply insert letters, periods, and commas, and the story is ready to ski down the slopes of booksellers.

Stories are wrought not with committees and grammar, they spring from a mystery that touches our own silent imagination. Questions hold us puzzled for years, then a storm of answers come sudden from the unknown, arrows from a bow we’ve never seen.