Don’t wait to sing your swan song.
The Most Beautiful Song
One day when I was a teenager in my parents' house I heard the most beautiful music. It was so intense and complex and captivating that it drew me out of my self-absorbed and friend-obsessed ways. I immediately tried to locate where this music was coming from. I walked into a room off of the living room that had windows covering the entire south side of the house. And that is when I saw it. This huge thunderous harmonious sound was emerging from a tiny bird. It stopped singing as it lay on the floor and seemed to be struggling. I walked right over to it and picked it up. I was looking into its eyes when all of the sudden the weight of it's head dropped onto my palm. It fell like a marble, tiny but dense. That was it. He was dead.
This was one of my early experiences of death and it was very profound. Even as I type this tears are welling up in my eyes. I was so perplexed about the entire scene. How did it get in the house? What caused it to die? What was with that achingly beautiful song? That is when I learned about the concept of a swan song. And I immediately understood that this bird took every bit of aliveness he had and released it in one final song. It may have been a cry for help but it was definitely a song of gratitude of love of beauty and of life.
I have forever felt myself blessed to be there with the bird during his time of passing. And even now, thirty years later, I hold the gift of the experience. I think back on it from time to time. I don't want to wait until my dying breath to put everything I've got out into the world. I don't want to hold back. I don't want to protect myself. I want to be big and brave and vulnerable. A shining light of aliveness released with all my might.
And sometimes I do put out a tiny fraction of everything I've got. And it is amazing and interconnected and my heart jumps into my throat. And through those actions I am proclaiming: I am alive. I am grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I’ve seen it too many times. Where people die with their dance still in them. We don’t want to die with our dance still in us, ya’ll. You want to die with it all out on the field.
~Preston Smiles
What are you grateful to put out into the world?
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