One Cage, Two Birds

One Cage, Two Birds

This is a fable about two birds, both caged with food and water.

One bird rebelled against his conditions, rejected the food and kept knocking his head against the caged door. He was sad and frustrated. “We are doomed to die living this miserable life in this prison,” it said with a hopeless sense of accepting his circumstances.

The other bird said, "Let’s us enjoy the food and water and fly into freedom at the first opportunity to escape.”

The chance to escape seemed negligible to non-existent, but the bird remained optimistic and alert to the chance to escape.

The unexpected opportunity came in the evening when the master came home in a changed mood. He decided to set the birds free.

But while the bird that remained optimistic and alert to the chance to escape fled the cage into a life of freedom in the skies, the negative bird kept wondering if he will get food out in the open and if he will be able to survive. “It may not be such a great idea to go out and search for food and water when the master is providing everything free,” the negative bird said. Even as it was wallowing in doubts, the master’s wife came and admonished the master and quickly shut the open door before the remaining bird inside could escape. Influenced by his wife’s thoughts, the master thought that he may have erred in his judgment. The master and his wife were happy that they were to keep at least one bird in the cage.

While the opportunistic bird grabbed the first available chance to a life of freedom, the negative bird paid the price for procrastination to live and die a life of continuing misery in the cage. After years of staying in the cage, life was not easy at the beginning in the outside world, but with passage of time, the free bird truly enjoyed the many joys that were beyond even his imagination inside the cage. The caged bird, on the other hand, led the same drab life and continued to wallow in misery till his very end.

Many of us, too, find ourselves trapped in a cage. Most of us are like the negative bird: Keep cursing our bosses, our companies, our colleagues and wonder if we ever will get to free ourselves from the hell we find ourselves in. But, like the procrastinating bird, when an opportunity does come our way, we are filled with self-doubts that prevent us from taking the flight to freedom to chart out a life that we dream about. We tend to fool ourselves by thinking that we are in a comfort zone when in reality we are enduring the pangs of survival in the discomfort zone.