Maybe it’s the pandemic, or maybe just the lack of human interaction, but my greatest source of inspiration this past year has been a wren.
Let me explain. The wrens are building a nest in our birdhouse. They’re slow, loud, and persistent. It’s probably been a month since I first heard them chirping noisily and watched them carefully bringing long sticks over to the little wooden birdhouse that we had set up on a large pole by our house. They’ve built a nest there before, but I’ve never been so aware of their comings and goings till this year. It’s been a beautiful, cool spring in Southern California, and I’ve spent a lot of time outside working.
I’d see them try repeatedly to fit long twigs into the small hole of the birdhouse, maybe twenty failures for one success. I was so tempted to cut the sticks into small manageable pieces for them, but decided that the wrens probably knew, after millions of years of evolution, what they were doing. Although I am aware they hadn’t had birdhouses for millions of years, I still decided to stay out of it and let nature take its course.
I watched them try again and again, fluttering at the hole with a long stick, landing on the roof, then moving the stick in their mouth from one end to the other. They’d try again, drop the stick, only to come back with another and repeat the same process till I was the one who got so frustrated that I went inside the house. Every so often they would successfully get a stick at just the right angle, and it would slide into the hole with the bird following.
It took at least a month, but the nest seems to be finished now and I see the wrens dart in and out several times every day. I’m guessing that soon there will be babies.
Ever since I was young, I’ve heard the motto, “If you don’t succeed at first, try, try again.” It’s in every self-help book and a line from every motivational speaker. And it’s always followed by a personal story of how the speaker never gave up, usually overcoming great odds to achieve their success. It’s very good advice, I suppose, but I’ve never put it into practice in my own life. I try things once or twice but tend to give up quickly. The thought of trying something over and over again is foreign to me. The idea of trying something twenty or thirty times with no success seems the very definition of futility. And yet I watched the little wren try the same thing repeatedly, and eventually she had a nest.
I need to try harder. I need to keep trying until I achieve what I want, no matter how long it takes. I’ve heard a lot of sermons and read a lot of self- help books, but that little bird was the best motivation I’ve ever had. I never thought I’d get my inspiration from a bird, but I think I just did.