Like you, I’m spending a lot of time looking out the window these days. In the Midwest, we’re at the height of warbler season, and I’ve been having a fantastic time. My binoculars and my bird book at my side, I’m both confounded and delighted to see birds being birds–as if the pandemic doesn’t exist. Ha. If only.

Warblers are making the point right now better than any others. They taunt me with their aerodynamics and flashy colors. “Try to identify me if you can,” they seem to say. “But hurry up, because unlike you–stuck in the house–we are just passing through.”

I long for their freedom. Their ease. Their ability to gather and disburse at will. No mask. No worry.

Of course, the entire natural world is that way, but birds, somehow, seem to underscore the limits of confinement more than other animals. They fly in. They fly out. If you happen to be around when they fly by, great. If not, it’s warbler season. Wait five minutes.

Birds also remind me that they’ve always been there, living their birdy lives, and they don’t care a hoot about whether I see them or not. As much as they don’t know about coronavirus, they also don’t know about obligations, or self image, or to-do lists, or regrets. Like all other living things except humans, they are just naturally themselves. They don’t second guess. They just are.

To really grasp this truth is to embrace a life changing premise: what it could be like to just be.