On bird watching

It is remarkable how such a simple thing – an evening walk, a bird in a tree yelling its head off – can manage to cut through so much mental entanglement, can revive you when you are tired, can bring an almost immediate sense of well-being. And it occurred to me that evening that one of the things about the world is that it is largely indifferent to the human stories that we weave.

It's called "biophilia," which means love of living things, and what helped thinkBuddha's author ponder the clamour of life helped me realize why I've grown so fond of birdwatching these past few years.

I can't place the exact time it started, but sometime two summers ago I really started to notice the bird songs around my area. Part of it was waking up to so many songs, since tons of birds live around my apartment complex, and some of it was my reconnecting with nature through walks, runs, and bike rides.

A bird would make a song, and I would - for the first time - wonder where it came from, and from whom.

Anymore, a beautiful birdsong is enough to make me stop what I'm doing and pay attention. It's profound.