By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked
at Jonathan with awe in their golden eyes, for they had seen
him disappear from where he had been rooted for so long.
He stood their congratulations for less than a minute. “I’m
the newcomer here! I’m just beginning! It is I who must learn
from you!”
“I wonder about that, Jon,” said Sullivan, standing near.
“You have less fear of learning than any gull I’ve seen in ten
thousand years.” The Flock fell silent, and Jonathan fidgeted in
embarrassment.
“We can start working with time if you wish,” Chiang said,
“till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be
ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most
fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the
meaning of kindness and of love.”
A month went by, or something that felt about like a
month, and Jonathan learned at a tremendous rate. He always
had learned quickly from ordinary experience, and now, the
special student of the Elder Himself, he took in new ideas like
a streamlined feathered computer.
But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been
talking quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop
their learning and their practising and their striving to understand more of the perfect invisible principle of all life. Then,
as he spoke, his feathers went brighter and brighter and at last
turned so brilliant that no gull could look upon him.
“Jonathan,” he said, and these were the last words that he
spoke, “keep working on love.”
When they could see again, Chiang was gone.
As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time
and again of the Earth from which he had come. If he had
known there just a tenth, just a hundredth, of what he knew
here, how much more life would have meant! He stood on the
sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back there who
might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the
meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb
from a rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one
made Outcast for speaking his truth in the face of the Flock.
And the more Jonathan practised his kindness lessons, and the
more he worked to know the nature of love, the more he
wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past,
Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own
way of demonstrating love was to give something of the
truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see
truth for himself.
Sullivan, adept now at thought-speed flight and helping the
others to learn, was doubtful.
“Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of
the gulls in your old time would listen to you now? You know
the proverb, and it’s true: The gull sees farthest who flies highest.
Those gulls where you came from are standing on the ground,
squawking and fighting among themselves. They’re a thousand
miles from heaven — and you say you want to show them heaven from where they stand! Jon, they can’t see their own
wingtips! Stay here. Help the new gulls here, the ones who are
high enough to see what you have to tell them.” He was quiet
for a moment, and then he said, “What if Chiang had gone
back to his old worlds? Where would you have been today?”
The last point was the telling one, and Sullivan was right.
The gull sees farthest who flies highest.
Jonathan stayed and worked with the new birds coming in,
who were all very bright and quick with their lessons. But the
old feeling came back, and he couldn’t help but think that
there might be one or two gulls back on Earth who would be
able to learn, too. How much more would he have known by
now if Chiang had come to him on the day that he was
Outcast!
“Sully, I must go back,” he said at last. “Your students are
doing well. They can help you bring the newcomers along.”
Sullivan sighed, but he did not argue. “I think I’ll miss you,
Jonathan,” was all he said.
“Sully, for shame!” Jonathan said in reproach, “and don’t be
foolish! What are we trying to practise every day? If our
friendship depends on things like space and time, then when
we finally overcome space and time, we’ve destroyed our own
brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is
Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the
middle of Here and Now, don’t you think that we might see
each other once or twice?”
Sullivan Seagull laughed in spite of himself. “You crazy bird,”
he said kindly. “If anybody can show someone on the ground
how to see a thousand miles, it will be Jonathan Livingston
Seagull.” He looked at the sand. “Good-bye, Jon, my friend.”
“Good-bye, Sully. We’ll meet again.” And with that,
Jonathan held in thought an image of the great gull-flocks on
the shore of another time, and he knew with practised ease
that he was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom
and flight, limited by nothing at all.