The Chicken and The Eagle

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

There once lived a young Eagle who thought he was a chicken. As fate would have it, this Eagle was raised in a chicken coop from a very young age, where he lived alongside his chicken brothers and sisters. The young Eagle knew himself to be a chicken, no different from the rest of the chickens inhabiting the coop.

Nobody ever told him anything about Eagles and everyone treated him as one of their own. The young Eagle grew up with a whole vocabulary of inner talk that was 'chicken like'. He 'clucked' and 'pecked' to the best of his ability. He thought chicken thoughts, he developed chicken habits and he lived chicken dreams. As the years went by the Eagle grew older, yet his thoughts - the world of his inner self talk - stayed pretty much the same.

One day the Eagle was out in the yard foraging for seeds alongside his chicken brothers and sisters. Suddenly something caught the Eagle's attention. Out of the corner of his eye he could see something flying in the sky, high above the ground. Living inside the coop for most of his life, it was the first time the Eagle had seen such a magnificient animal.

Alerting a nearby chicken to this awe-inspiring sight the Eagle asked, 'Do you see that?! What an absolutely magnificient creature! Do you know what it is?' The Eagle's chicken brother said, 'Yeah, that is an Eagle. He is the majestic king of the skies. You need not concern yourself with Eagles. You and I are chickens and could never soar with the Eagles. The sooner you get back to pecking for seeds the better.'

The Eagle reluctantly turned away from the skies to resume his foraging. He never saw another one of his kind again. Yet, for the rest of his life, he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something about that Eagle he saw that day.