One of the first books I ever read and one that has had a profound impact on my life was Jonathan Livingston Seagull. If you recently left the flock or are planning on leaving, I recommend you find a quiet corner and draw strength from Jonathan.
I think that this book should replace Sun Tzu’s ‘The art of war’ as required reading for entrepreneurs. I was recently watching a video of Sergei Brin giving a talk at Berkeley. One of the students in the audience asked him if thinking about competitors like Microsoft keeps him up at night. He replied that he doesn’t worry too much about competitors and that thinking about the incredible opportunity that he has is what keeps him up at night.
Here are the first few paragraphs of Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull:
It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a
gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water. and the
word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a
thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another
busy day beginning.
But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan
Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered
his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard
twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly
slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until
the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce
concentration, held his breath, forced one… single… more… inch…
of… curve… Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell.
Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air
is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.
But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings
again in that trembling hard curve – slowing, slowing, and stalling once
more – was no ordinary bird.
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.
The book is published in its entirety here.
Leave a Reply