“Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts
of flight—
how to get from shore to food and back again.
For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but
eating.
For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but
flight.
More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to
fly.
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s
self popular with other birds.
Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days
alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.
“Why, Jon, why?” his mother asked.
“Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock,
Jon?
Why can’t you leave low flying to the pelicans, the
albatross?
Why don’t you eat? Son, you’re bone and feathers!”
“I don’t mind being bone and feathers, mom. I just want to
know what I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just
want to know.”
“See here, Jonathan,” said his father, not unkindly.
“Winter isn’t far away.
Boats will be few, and the surface fish will be swimming
deep.
If you must study, then study food, and how to get it.
This flying business is all very well, but you can’t eat a
glide, you know.
Don’t you forget that the reason you fly is to eat.”
Jonathan”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
“- „Chiang, lumea asta de fapt nu e paradisul, nu-i
aşa?”
Bătrânul zâmbi în lumina lunii.
Bătrânul zâmbi în lumina lunii.
„Te desăvârşeşti mereu, Jonathan”, spuse el.
- „Bine, dar ce se va întâmpla acum? Unde mergem? Oare paradisul nu există nicăieri?”
-„Nu, Jonathan, nu există.
- „Bine, dar ce se va întâmpla acum? Unde mergem? Oare paradisul nu există nicăieri?”
-„Nu, Jonathan, nu există.
Paradisul nu este un loc sau un
timp.
A fi desăvârşit—iată paradisul”.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
