Most seagulls were interested in food.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was interested in flying.

Not simply getting from one place to another. He wanted to know how high he could climb, how fast he could dive, what a seagull might actually be capable of.

To the other gulls, this made very little sense.

There was food to find. There were ordinary things to do. Why waste time discovering how high or how fast a seagull could fly when flying was simply a way to survive?

Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a simple story, but perhaps that simplicity is why it has endured.

Jonathan isn’t trying to be different.

He isn’t rebelling simply for the pleasure of rebellion.

He has discovered something that matters deeply to him, even though the flock cannot understand why it should matter at all.

There is something very human in that.

Most of us inherit an idea of what a life is supposed to look like. We learn what is sensible, respectable and worth pursuing. Much of it is useful. A flock, after all, isn’t necessarily wrong.

The flock knows things too. There is safety in belonging, wisdom in experience, and good reason why certain ways of living survive from one generation to the next.

Perhaps the problem begins only when what has worked before becomes a boundary around what might be possible.

Jonathan doesn’t need the flock to be wrong in order to fly differently.

And perhaps neither do we.

Occasionally something calls us beyond familiar boundaries.

Sometimes it’s an idea, a fascination or a question we cannot stop asking.

But sometimes it’s harder to name.

A feeling that something about the world doesn’t quite add up. That the things everyone else seems to accept so easily don’t feel quite so certain. Or simply a sense of being somehow different from the people around us.

Perhaps that’s why Jonathan’s story resonates.

He doesn’t know where his fascination with flying will lead. He only knows that living exactly as the other gulls do would mean ignoring something he cannot quite ignore.

The temptation is to ask whether the flock approves.

Perhaps there is another question.

What might we discover if, occasionally, we stopped asking how far we are supposed to fly?