The Bird That Forgot

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Welcome, friend.

If you’ve arrived here weary, distracted, or simply curious, this space is for you. The Noticing Stone is not a place of answers, but of invitations. Today, I offer you a story. One that might land softly in your chest, or stir something long asleep in your wings.

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Once, in a grove where the wind whispered secrets to the leaves, there lived a bird who had forgotten it could fly.

It wasn’t born flightless. In its youth, it soared with others, tracing spirals in the sky and sketching invisible sigils above the treetops. But one day, while chasing a glimmer, it tumbled, not from injury, but from doubt. The fall was gentle, but the shame was sharp.

“I must be a ground creature now,” it thought. So it walked. It hopped. It nested low. It watched others ascend but told itself stories: They are built differently. My wings are ornamental.

Years passed. The bird became a sage of the forest floor. It taught hatchlings how to forage, how to listen for worms, how to read the shadows of flying things. But it never looked up for long.

One morning, a storm came. The grove flooded. Creatures scrambled. The bird, swept by rising water, clung to a branch. And in that moment, half-submerged, half-remembering, it flared its wings.

Not to escape. Not to prove. Just to hold on.

The wind caught it.

Lifted it.

Carried it.

And the bird, startled by its own ascent, laughed. Not a proud laugh, but a bewildered one. A laugh that said, I was never broken. Just convinced.

From that day on, it flew again, but not always. Sometimes it walked, sometimes it perched, sometimes it taught. But it never again mistook forgetting for truth.

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I invite you to consider the following reflection.

How often do we forget our own wings?

We fall once. We doubt. We adapt. We tell ourselves stories. We become sages of the ground, experts in limitation. And yet, somewhere in us, the spiral still curls. The arc still lifts. The wind still waits.

This story isn’t about birds. It’s about the moment we remember. The laugh that breaks illusion. The gentle reclaiming of what was never truly lost.

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Here at the Noticing Stone, we practice a simple ritual: 

Pause. Notice. Return.

- Pause: Let the story settle. Let your breath slow. 

- Notice: What flickers in you? A forgotten gift? A quiet ache? A wing twitching? 

- Return: To presence. To possibility. To the truth that you were never broken, just convinced.

Thanks for visiting The Noticing Stone, and remember:

Mindfulness is in the palm of your hand.

~ The Noticing Stone