Hawks and Elephants

My cousin has an aviary. It's filled with finches and homing pigeons. Throughout the day, his backyard is filled with ample amounts of chirping and cooing. Once in a while, I'll walk out back and there will be complete silence. Everything's gone still. In these moments, I know a hawk is nearby. Even Roscoe, my parrot who's never lived a day in the wild, knows to stop.

Wherever the hawk goes, a silence extends. As a direct result of its power and potential, nature knows to be still.

Living in the Himalayas, there'd be nights where the local dogs would bark all night long. I asked a local why this would happen every now and then. They said it meant there was most likely an elephant nearby.

Wherever the elephant goes, it gets the dogs barking. Its power and size triggers them, but the elephant remains unbothered.

As we grow, so does our event horizon. Radiating fulfillment with bliss as our baseline, we begin to have a profound impact on our environment. We'll walk into a room full of volatility and things will ease up, fall still. In other moments, our steadiness will cause others to bark and yap. Reactivity can sometimes sound the alarm when bliss approaches. But we remain unphased.

Steady, simple, and substantial work may not be instantly recognized. When chatter is stilled or the dogs start barking, we know we're on to something.