For all who miss the Boortz Copy and Paste:The Neal Boortz Commencement Speech!

[Todd-'o'-Vision]

I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august occasion. It's about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impress you; you'll have enough smoke blown your way today. And you can bet your tassels I'm not here to impress the faculty and administration.

You may not like much of what I have to say, and that's fine. You will remember it though. Especially after about 10 years out there in the real world. This, it goes without saying, does not apply to those of you who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees.

This gowned gaggle behind me is your faculty. You’ve heard the old saying that those who can - do. Those who can't - teach. That sounds deliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and do. These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach.

By the way, just because you are leaving this place with a diploma doesn’t mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner handed me my private pilot’s license many years ago, he said, 'Here, this is your ticket to learn.' The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the learning has just begun.

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you're a compassionate and caring person, aren't you now? Well, isn’t that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a Liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in. Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast .. including your own assessment of just how much you really know.

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear "I feel." From the Right you will hear "I think." From the Liberals you will hear references to groups --The Blacks, The Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives and Libertarians think -- and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual.

Liberals feel that their favored groups, have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives (and Libertarians, myself among them I might add) think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.

In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is going away. Your recognition and appreciation of your individual identity starts now.

If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a libertarian or a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven’t developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years.

Something is going to happen soon that is going to really open your eyes. You’re going to actually get a full time job! You’re also going to get a lifelong work partner. This partner isn’t going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn’t want to share in your effort, you’re your earnings.

Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent. An agent representing a strange and diverse group of people. An agent for every teenager with an illegitimate child. An agent for a research scientist who wanted to make some cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth. An agent for some poor demented hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist ... but who just can’t manage to sell any of her artwork on the open market.

Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, job skills ... but who wanted a job at City Hall. An agent for tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign aid. An agent for multi-million-dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the unimaginable power of this agent's for their personal enrichment and benefit.

That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate, oppressive government. Believe me, you will be awed by the unimaginable power this agent has. Power that you do not have. A power that no individual has, or will have. This agent has the legal power to use force – deadly force – to accomplish its goals.

You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce itself rather gruffly, hand you a few forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal one ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to.

Now, let me tell you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no, I'm sorry, there just isn't any way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you can’t decrease it’s share of your income. That power rests with him, not you.

So, here I am saying negative things to you about government. Well, be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Yes … a necessary evil, but dangerous nonetheless … somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.

Now – let’s address a few things that have been crammed into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as soon as possible. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they fail miserably out there in the real world.

First – that favorite buzz word of the media, government and academia: Diversity!

You have been taught that the real value of any group of people - be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever - is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based not on an individual's abilities or character, but on a person’s identity and status as a member of a group. Yes – it’s that liberal group identity thing again.

Within the great diversity movement group identification - be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status - means more than the individual's integrity, character or other qualifications.

Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. From this day on every single time you hear the word "diversity" you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of individuality you possess.

We also need to address this thing you seem to have about "rights." We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called "rights" in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses.

You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right - the right to a Beemer, for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so.

Forget it. Forget those rights! I'll tell you what your rights are! You have a right to live free, and to the results of your labor. I'll also tell you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.

You may, for instance, think that you have a right to health care. After all, Hillary said so, didn’t she? But you cannot receive health care unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time - his life - to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that's his choice. You have no "right" to his time or property. You have no right to his or any other person's life or to any portion thereof.

You may also think you have some "right" to a job; a job with a living wage, whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I am sure you would scream if some urban outdoorsmen (that would be "homeless person" for those of you who don’t want to give these less fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money.

The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs - the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn’t cost anyone else either property or time. It's their right, and they exercise it brilliantly.

By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase "less fortunate" a bit ago when I was talking about the urban outdoorsmen? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you'll understand why.

To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is "less fortunate" is to imply that a successful person - one with a job, a home and a future - is in that position because he or she was "fortunate." The dictionary says that fortunate means "having derived good from an unexpected place." There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.

If the Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of "fortune" or "luck," then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit.

This "success equals luck" idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt refers to high-achievers as "people who have won life's lottery." He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky.

It's not luck, my friends. It's choice. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled "The Greatest Secret in the World." The lesson? Very simple: "Use wisely your power of choice."

That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He’s there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other - victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, "Look! He did this to me!" than it is to look into a mirror and say, "You S.O.B.! You did this to me!"

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car.

Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block - some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you. Something unthinkable. You, my friend, could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy,, the successful, the rich.

Quite a few people have made that mistake.

The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich.

Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich.

Envy is a powerful emotion. Even more powerful than the emotional minefield that surrounded Bill Clinton when he reviewed his last batch of White House interns. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: "The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have anything to do with it.'

The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more "fair."

You have heard, no doubt, that in America the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government's own numbers show that many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer, and the poor who remain poor … there’s an explanation -- a reason. The rich, you see, keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep doing the things that make them poor.

Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor in America. So, you need to know that under our government's definition of "poor" you can have a $5 million net worth, a $300,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and $1 million in your checking account, and you can still be officially defined by our government as "living in poverty." Now there's something you haven't seen on the evening news.

How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is "living in poverty," the government measures one thing -- just one thing. Income. It doesn't matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are 'living in poverty."

This isn’t exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it?

Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government's own statistics show that people who are said to be "living in poverty" spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. just remember all this the next time Peter Jennings puffs up and tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.

Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of "poor" is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder.

I'm about to be stoned by the faculty here. They've already changed their minds about that honorary degree I was going to get. That's OK, though. I still have my Ph.D. in Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. I learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It's a trap. Think about it - the truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you’ll be unable to deal with life, or the truth. So, get over it.

Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts.

• You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.

• When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for president. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there.

• Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the president of the United States. If someone can’t deal honestly with you, send them packing.

• Don't bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it -- to take their money by force for your own needs -- then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.

• Don’t look in other people's pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What your earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.

• Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don’t see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.

• Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

• Finally (and aren’t you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote,

1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being.

2. Use wisely your power of choice.

3. Go the extra mile ... drive home in the dark.

Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you can.

Now, if you have any idea at all what's good for you, you will get the hell out of here and never come back.

Class dismissed.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

And now for something a lot deeper -- the first chapter of Jonathan Livingston Seagull:

Part One

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.

A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water, and the word for Breakfast
Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge
and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.

But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston
Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted
his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisted curve through his wings. The
curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a
whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in
fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one ... single ... more ... inch ... of ...
curve .... Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell.

Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them
disgraced and it is dishonor.

But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that
trembling hard curve - slowing, slowing, and stalling once more - was no ordinary
bird.

Most gulls didn't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to
get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters,
but eating. For this gull, through, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More
than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with
other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone,
making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

He didn't know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less than half his
wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer, with less effort. His
glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash into the sea, but with a long flat
wake as he touched the surface with his feet tightly streamlined against his body.
When he began sliding in to feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of
his slide in the sand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed.

Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of
the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the albatross?
Why don't you eat? Jon, you're bone and feathers!"

"I don't mind being bone and feathers, Mum. I just want to know what I
can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know."

"See here, Jonathan," said his father, not unkindly. "Winter isn't far away.
Boats will be few, and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you must
study,. then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is all very well,
but you can't eat a glide, you know. Don't you forget that the reason you fly is
to eat."

Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried to be behave like
the other gulls; he really tried, screeching and fighting with the flock around the
piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and bread. But he couldn't make it
work.

It's all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-won anchovy to a
hungry old gull chasing him. I could be spending all this time learning to fly. There's
so much to learn!

It wasn't long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out at see,
hungry, happy, learning.

The subject was speed, and in a week's practice he learned more about speed
than the fastest gull alive.

From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he could, he pushed over
into a blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned why seagulls don't make
blazing steep power-dives. In just six seconds he was moving seventy miles per
hour, the speed at which one's wing goes unstable on the upstroke.

Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the very peak of his
ability, he lost control at high speed.

Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, then push over,
flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left wing stalled on an upstroke,
he'd roll violently left, stall his right wing recovering, and flick like fire into a wild
tumbling spin to the right.

He couldn't be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried, but all ten
times, as he passed through seventy miles per hour, he burst into a churning mass of
feathers, out of control, crashing down into the water.

They key, he thought as last, dripping wet, must be to hold the wings still at high
speeds - to flap up to fifty and then hold the wings still.

From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beak straight down,
wings full out and stable from the moment he passed fifty miles per hour. It took
tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten seconds he has blurred through ninety
miles per hour. Jonathan had set a world speed record for seagulls!

But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, the instant he
changed the angle of his wings, he snapped into that same terrible uncontrolled
disaster, and at ninety miles per hour it hit him like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull
exploded in midair and smashed down into a brick-hard sea.

When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in moonlight on the
surface of the ocean. His wings were ragged bars of lead, but the weight of failure
was even heavier on his back. He wished, feebly, that the weight could be just
enough to drag him gently down to the bottom, and end it all.

As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within him. There's
no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature. If I were meant to learn
so much about flying, I'd have a falcon's short wings, and live on mice instead of
fish. My father was right. I must forget this foolishness. I must fly home to the Flock
and be content as I am, as a poor limited seagull.

The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at night is on
shore, and from this moment forth, he vowed, he would be a normal gull. It would
make everyone happier.

He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land, grateful
for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude flying.

But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with everything I
learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will fly like one. So he
climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his wings harder, pressing for
shore.

He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the flock. there would be
no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn, there would be no more
challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty, just to stop thinking, and fly
through the dark, toward the lights above the beach.

Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the dark!

Jonathan was not alert to listen. It's pretty, he thought. The moon and the lights
twinkling on the water, throwing out little beacon-trails though the night, and all so
peaceful and still...

Get Down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in the dark,
you'd have the eyes f an owl! You'd have charts for brains! You'd have a falcon's
short wings!

There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston Seagull -
blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished.

Short Wings. A falcon's short wings!

That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little wing, all I need
is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips alone! Short wings!

He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a moment for
thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly in to his body, left only
the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips extended into the wind, and fell into a
vertical dive.

The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour, ninety, a
hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a hundred and forty
miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been before at seventy, and with the
faintest twist of his wingtips he eased out of the dive and shot above the waves, a
grey cannonball under the moon.

He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundred forty miles
per hour! and under control! If I dive from five thousand feet instead of two
thousand, I wonder how fast...

His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great swift
wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made himself. Such
promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched
excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise.

By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practicing again. From five thousand feet the fishing
boats were specks in the flat blue water, Breakfast Flock was a faint cloud of dust
motes, circling.

He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his fear was
under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings, extended his
short, angled wingtips, and plunged directly toward the sea. By the time he had
passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity, the wind was a solid
beating wall of sound against which he could move no faster. He was flying now
straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per hour. He swallowed, knowing
that if his wings unfolded at that speed he'd be blown into a million tiny shreds of
seagull. But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure
beauty.

He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and blurring in that
gigantic wind, the boat and the crowd of gulls tilting and growing meteor-fast,
directly in his path.

He couldn't stop; he didn't know yet even how to turn at that speed.

Collision would be instant death.

And so he shut his eyes.

It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Jonathan Livingston
Seagull fired directly through the centre of Breakfast Flock, ticking off two hundred
twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a great roaring shriek of wind and feathers.
The Gull of Fortune smiled upon him this once, and no one was killed.

By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky he was still scorching
along at a hundred and sixty miles per hour. When he had slowed to twenty and
stretched his wings again at last, the boat was a crumb on the sea, four thousand
feet below.

His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull two hundred fourteen
miles per hour! It was a breakthrough, the greatest single moment in the history of
the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened for Jonathan Gull. Flying out to
his lonely practice area, folding his wings for a dive from eight thousand feet, he set
himself at once to discover how to turn.

A single wingtip feather, he found, moved a fraction of an inch, gives a smooth
sweeping curve at the tremendous speed. Before he learned this, however, he
found that moving more than one feather at that speed will spin you like a rifle ball
... and Jonathan had flown the first aerobatics of any seagull on earth.

He spared no time that day for talk with other gulls, but flew on past sunset. He
discovered the loop, the slow roll, the point roll, the inverted spin, the gull bunt, the
pinwheel.


When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was full night. He was
dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop to landing, with a snap roll just
before touchdown. When they hear of it, he thought, of the Breakthrough, they'll be
wild with joy. How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging
forth and back to the fishing boats, there's a reason to life! We can list ourselves
out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence
and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

The years head hummed and glowed with promise.

The gulls were flocked into the Council Gathering when he landed, and
apparently had been so flocked for sometime. They were, in fact, waiting.

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Stand to Centre!" The Elder's words sounded
in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand to Centre meant only great shame or great
honor. Stand to Centre for honor was the way the gulls' foremost leaders were
marked. Of course, he thought, the Breakfast Flock this morning; they saw the
Breakthrough! But I want no honors. I have no wish to be leader. I want only to
share what I've found, to show those horizons out ahead for us all. He stepped
forward.

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull," said the Elder, "Stand to Centre for shame
in the sight of your fellow gulls!"

It felt like being hit with a board. His knees went weak, his feathers sagged,
there was a roaring in his ears. Centred for shame? Impossible! The Breakthrough!
They can't understand! They're wrong, they're wrong!

"...for his reckless irresponsibly," the solemn voice intoned, "violating the
dignity and tradition of the Gull Family..."

To be centred for shame meant that he would be cast out of gull society,
banished to the solitary life on the Far Cliffs.

"...one day, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn that
irresponsibly? My brothers!" he cried. "Who is more responsible than a gull
who finds and follows a meaning, a higher purpose for life? For a thousand
years we have scrabbled after fish heads, but now we have a chance, let me
show you what I've found..."

The Flock might as well have been stone.

"The Brotherhood is broken," the gulls intoned together, and with one accord
they solemnly closed their ears and turned their backs upon him.


Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew way out beyond
the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that other gulls refused to
believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and
see.

He learned more each day. He learned that a streamlined high-speed dive could
bring him to find the rare and tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of
the ocean: he no longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival. He
learned to sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind,
covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise. With the same inner control, he
flew through heavy sea-fogs and climbed above them into dazzling clear skies... in
the very times when every other gull stood on the ground, knowing nothing but mist
and rain. He learned to ride the high winds far inland, to dine there on delicate
insects.

What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone; he
learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had paid. Jonathan Seagull
discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so
short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long and fine life indeed.

They came in the evening, then, and found Jonathan gliding peaceful and alone
through his beloved sky. The two gulls that appeared at his wings were pure as
starlight, and the glow from them was gentle and friendly in the high night air. But
most lovely of all was the skill with which they flew, their wingtips moving a precise
and constant inch from his own.

Without a word, Jonathan put them to his test, a test that no gull had ever
passed. He twisted his wings, slowed to a single mile per hour above stall. The two
radiant birds slowed with him, smoothly, locked in position. They knew about slow
flying.

He folded his wings, rolled, and dropped in a dive to a hundred nd ninety miles
per hour. They dropped with him, streaking down in flawless formation.

At last he turned that speed straight up into a long vertical slow-roll. The rolled
with him, smiling.

He recovered to level flight and was quiet for a time before he spoke. "Very
well," he said, "who are you?"

"We're from your Flock, Jonathan. We are your brothers." The words were
strong and calm. "We've come to take you higher, to take you home."

"Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast And we fly now at the
peak of the Great Mountain Wind Beyond a few hundred feet, I can lift this
old body no higher."

"But you can, Jonathan. For you have learned. One school is finished, and
the time has come to another to begin."

As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding lighted that moment for
Jonathan Seagull. they were right. He could fly higher, and it was time to go home.

He gave one last long look across the sky, across that magnificent silver land
where he had learned so much.

"I'm ready," he said at last.

And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two starbright gulls to disappear
into a perfect dark sky.

 

[honeylick]

what did i tell you about horseplay in the house? go outside to play and don't slam the door on your way out, either.