One Step at a Time: Navigating the Unknown
We have several families of baby chicks on the property right now.
The eight, who I now call the adolescents, appeared about 7 or 8 weeks back. Right around the time when the world was stopping and everybody went indoors. We’ve been feeding them and watching them grow from tiny little balls of fluff to gangling, rather awkward looking teens.
The little yellow family appeared about 4 weeks ago. I looked out back one day and saw six new babies slowly making their way out from behind their mama with tiny peeps and teeny beaks, mimicking her pecking motions in the ground.
The four black ones appeared about 3 weeks ago emerging from a giant pine tree on the side of our yard. And just yesterday, I wondered out front and saw a new family. Five babies in mixed colors. Mama Hen did not trust me to come close, but I’ll give it some time. I’ve learned a bag of oats goes a long way for building trust with a hen and her chicks.
Our chicks have been a gift during a time of chaos, change and confusion. While life has slowed and uncertainty has swirled, they’ve been reminding me to notice the little things, appreciate the good and take joy in the simple pleasures the grace of life has to offer.
I’ve watched them grow, marveling at how they come into this world knowing nothing. They grow through following their instincts and watching their mother, as they learn how to be a chick, how to look for food, how to roost, walk and fly.
The chicks are experts at learning to navigate the unknown and find their way through instinct, experience + sensing, and I believe we can learn a lot from our friends in the animal kingdom at this unprecedented time where we too are being asked to grow, relying less on our logical capabilities and more on our instincts + intuition, our experiential wisdom, and our feelings and inner sensing.
So, in the interest of levity and nature’s wisdom, I thought I’d channel the chick’s teachings for this month’s Intuitive YOU and share a few things I’ve been learning:
Lessons From the Chicks…
Focus On The Moment
There is something joyful about observing a life in the day of a chick. They roost in the jungle at night and come up into our yard not long after sunrise. The morning is spent pecking, peeping, and going from spot to spot in search of food. The afternoon brings more of the same with breaks here and there for respite from the sun
They make their rounds again as sunset nears, usually stopping by our door around 6:00 pm having learned there’s a good chance I’ll come out and feed them. Afterwards they cluster in our yard, roosting by their mama, as if they are savoring the last bit of day. Just before sunset, they retreat into the jungle’s sanctuary for bedtime.
It is my observation they are never worried about what tomorrow brings or what happened yesterday. They are simply present in the here and now, taking each moment as it comes.
They remind me to do the same: Take life as it comes without over focusing on what has passed or what might be. Just show up on each given day and do the tasks in front of me.
Learn to Stand with New Legs + See With New Eyes
I’ve read that when a chick first hatches, it can’t see well, and it takes a while to develop its sight. So, its first impressions of the world comes through other senses. I’ve noticed that the tiniest of the babies often seek shade when the sun gets too bright, tucking their faces into their wings and keeping their eyes protected from the light— it takes a while for them to learn to see and look fully at the world.
They also learn how to walk and use their legs— I’ve watched them bumble, stumble and feel their way around, until they gradually orient to their bodies and begin to figure out how things work.
I believe we are at a time in history when we are learning to stand with new legs and see with new eyes, and we are being asked to develop new perspectives and new ways of being.
Each of us has been asked to look more fully at the world right now, and sometimes it hurts the gaze. We’ve stumbled, bumbled, tripped and made our way through these last few weeks as best we know how. Learning and growing each and every day, as we learn to orient ourselves to new territory. Which brings me to the wisdom of my next point:
It’s Okay Not to Know
Nature, in all her mysterious, beautiful ways, is a creature who is inherently devoid of judgment.
The baby chicks are busy learning how to be roosters and chickens, they waste no time judging themselves, judging their process, worrying that they’re not getting it fast enough or feeling like they are not doing good enough at being who they are!
They don’t know what they don’t know, and they are curious students who embrace the process of their growth.
Each of us has been experiencing new growth in our own unique ways and in our own unique circumstances. How much easier would te process be if we strived to trade any forms of self-condemnation for self-grace? What would life look like if we invited the energies of non-judgment and unconditional acceptance into our process? How might life feel kinder and easier if we gave ourselves permission not to know and grow through the process?
Look For Higher Guidance
A couple weeks ago I was peacefully sitting on the bed writing on my laptop, when I heard a giant ruckus outside my window. The six yellow babies were tucked in a giant bush by my window, urgently peeping and piping. I went outside to investigate and discovered their Mama wasn’t with them— thus the racket.
Thankfully I realized that their Mama was in the front yard up in a tree. (I’m guessing a rooster or another chicken may have chased her there and she got separated from her babies in the process.) The little ones intuitively knew to cluster together and call for her. I eventually reunited mom and babies, and everybody celebrated with oats.
I was left thinking about the vital importance of calling for help when we feel alone and in need of higher support. Maybe support comes in the form of somebody wiser than us who represents a mentor or teacher. Or maybe we access our spiritual connection when we need to feel safe and reassured.
Many of us could benefit from learning we don’t always have to rely on our own devices to make it through. We are connected, interdependent and everything is related within the greater web. We need each other at this time— it’s okay to call for help.
One Step at a Time
Watching the chicks grow up is a visceral reminder of this principle. Each day I watch them change bit by bit. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is happening and observing their growth reminds me of this is a beautiful approach to navigating life:
One step at a time. One breath at a time. First one moment and then the next and then the next.
It is a simple truth we can bring ourselves back to whenever life feels too much: We don’t have to do it all at once. Just one step at a time.
A Final Reflection…
When I first arrived in Kauai I wrote an article on Trusting the Wild Unknown. At the time I deeply craved a blueprint from spirit that gave me my marching orders- my instructions on what I was meant to do, be, grow, and build. I had deconstructed my old life, and I was anxious to know the plan and when reconstruction would begin.
I craved certainty. I craved certitude. I was so anxious to know what I didn’t know that I often tied my mind into knots trying to see the bigger picture. I thought I was doing something wrong and missing a key that would crack the code of my soul journey and help me see the path.
It’s now almost three years later, and I still don’t have certainty or certitude. I’ve found keys along the way, times where I’ve rise above the clouds and seen the bigger picture, but there’s many more times where I’m down on the trail, amidst the trees, just moving forward one step at a time without knowing what’s around the bend. What I’ve learned is this:
Trust is an ongoing process of surrender and letting go. Trust isn’t a one-time action, but a daily journey we take when we continue to relinquish our need to know in exchange for our belief that the universe is capable of magic, mystery, and supporting our needs.
There is so much possibility and space in the unknown. So much room for creative adaptation and wild reinvention. So much grace when we yield to the process, instead of trying to control the outcome.
It is a new way of being we are asked to step into now. A way of being that requires us to rely less on our old devices (logic, overthinking, planning, analyizing and maintaining control) and reach for new ways of being that support a feeling based existence of intuition, perception, creativity, sensing and fluidity.