Do You Climb Invisible Hills?

I saw some­thing delight­ful this morn­ing. It was one of those rare moments of mer­ri­ment and glee that hap­pen spon­ta­neously. Let me set this up for you, because I want to share both what I saw and some thoughts that occurred to me after­ward about run­ning your home business.

It was early, maybe an hour after dawn. The wind was gust­ing upwards of 20 mph and fur­ther out to sea, where the storm that left here the day before still raged, the wind was at gale force. Today, here at the shore, the morn­ing was unex­pect­edly sun-​​filled and bright. Clouds had been pre­dicted. I stood on my deck admir­ing the glint of sun and wind-​​whipped white caps top­ping the ocean before me as I sipped my first cup of tea of the day. As my eyes drank in the stun­ning ocean view, my mind was else­where — think­ing about my to-​​do list and all that I planned to get done today.

A group of birds began flap­ping across my vista, fly­ing low, sin­gle file, only inches above the wave crests. It took a few moments for my mind to reg­is­ter what my eyes were see­ing. To my amaze­ment the dozen or so birds I had expected to see, turned into a large flock of hun­dreds trav­el­ing south. Sin­gle file. Inches above the waves. Incredible.

My tea grew cold. I watched, spell­bound, bird after bird fly by. Beak to tail feather, their wings flapped in an uncanny tan­dem fight against the wind.

A flock of sea birds fly­ing low along the waves is not unusual here. Every day I am enchanted by the gulls and my favorite local flock of large pel­i­cans as they skip along the waves in search of their next meal. What I found extra­or­di­nary was the sheer num­ber of birds and that they were fly­ing sin­gle file with travel — not hunt­ing for food — their obvi­ous and deter­mined purpose.

But wait…there’s more. As I watched this long conga line fly across the seascape before me, a bump appeared in the line. This is when I laughed. For no vis­i­ble rea­son these birds flew up a lit­tle hill of air and back down to the wave tops. It was as if a conga line of humans danced up a hill and back down with­out miss­ing a beat along the way. And once it started, every sub­se­quent bird flew up that same invis­i­ble hill and back down. Delight­ful to watch and inexplicable.

The image remained in my head long after the birds had passed out of my view. I won­dered about what type of birds they might be and why so many were fly­ing south when spring has finally arrived here at the North Car­olina shore.

(Note to self…e-mail Car­ole Brown at EcoSys­tem Gar­den­ing to ask her about this.)

I won­dered also what might have caused that first bird to climb the invis­i­ble hill. A gust of wind? A burst of energy? A glint of some­thing fright­en­ing at water level?

My thoughts even­tu­ally led me to won­der about the chal­lenges those of us who work from home face every day. Do you climb invis­i­ble hills? Are you putting obsta­cles in your way that could be avoided? Or worse yet, are you one of the hun­dreds of birds climb­ing that invis­i­ble hill just because the first bird did?

I don’t have answers or hints or tips or even a les­son for you today; just a mag­i­cal moment to share and a few thoughts. Each of you has a unique busi­ness — unique because it is yours and you are unique. How you choose to stand out from the crowd can make the dif­fer­ence between huge suc­cess or mediocre suc­cess or even out­right fail­ure. The next time you face some­one who tells you to fol­low the leader, remem­ber my birds fly­ing up and over the hill of air. And ask your­self whether fol­low­ing or lead­ing is the right choice for you and your home business.

What kind of invis­i­ble hills do you climb? Share in the com­ments below!