Jujy’s Destiny
When you’re a little blue bird subject to the whims of your seemingly unpredictable human being, you start to understand the concept of destiny. Jujy, despite all her opinions and outrage, lives in a cage that is her home and she goes where her home takes her. Recently, unbeknownst to her (as always), Jujy’s destiny has been in limbo. Will Jujy remain in my mother’s living room in San Mateo, California, will she be shipped across the Atlantic in a box to end up in a living room in Europe, or will she be surprised one day to discover her favorite human’s permanent return home only to be whisked away to yet another foreign living room? Life isn’t too complicated for Jujy, but it is uncertain. It’s uncertain in that worst of ways, the kind that gives no warnings and accepts no resentment. Jujy’s trapped in her cage, and if that cage takes her to Istanbul, well by golly, I guess she’s going to go there.
You might be thinking that this is merely the consequence of being an ornamental pet bird who lives in a cage. We’ll all take a moment to thank the stars that we too, are not caged birds. When it comes to people, we like to think that we’re in charge of our own destinies, that in fact, the idea of “destiny” or “fate” may not even exist. If I can make decisions, and my decisions affect changes in the future, then how can fate exist? Consider this: Jujy, when her cage door is open, makes decisions too. She decides whether or not she will come out of her cage, where she will climb to, if she’ll fly and where she’ll fly to, whether she will socialize with the other living room birds that day, and whether she’ll allow me to pick her up and scratch her head. It’s only when Jujy’s confined to her cage that her destiny becomes dependent on me.
Lately I’ve been in a position to make some life changing decisions about whether I will stay in Europe, return home to the U.S., or move to some other location altogether. On the surface, these seem like my own independent decisions. At a deeper level, however, very few decisions are free of outside influences, especially those that involve other people. Even Jujy’s decision to come out of her cage depends on my decision to open the door.
To say that we don’t have destinies, even if they are short term fates, is a crazy thing considering how significant a portion of our decisions aren’t ours to make. We’re confined just as Jujy is, to the cages of our hearts, to other people’s decisions, other people’s hearts, and to time and space and luck. While we’re never trapped, and we’re usually in better positions than pet birds, other people’s uncertainties can be our uncertainties, and my destiny can be Jujy’s as well.
