I noticed these two Robins perched at the top of a nutmeg tree in our garden even before day break. I waited at least fifteen minutes to make out if it was only its flight station or more than that. I looked around for a nest in that tree and in the adjacent tree. I could not find one. I looked out for the same pair for the next seven days around the same time. I found them on two occasions.
I was fascinated by their choice of the edge of a tree for resting. Two most slender branches of the tree.
What is at the edge of a tree!
360 degree view of the space round. Get the first experience of the morning sun rays. Easy to fly away when needed. The privacy of this space as bigger birds look for safer places.
The pressure is to live in the main stream. It is in the main stream there are more events, happenings, encounters or visibility.
When one choose to be at the edge where others do not congregate too much, there can be the privilege of privacy or the risk of loneliness.
Both have different meanings.
To be private means to choose to face the situation with a resolve to find a new meaning and explore the situation to turn it into an opportunity. I came across an artist who create designs, portraits, nature scenes and street scenes meditatively on a canvas. His work involves having an inner view before he translates them into a canvas. When people drop in to fetch one of his paintings he has a conversation with the buyer to hear from the visitor his or her perception of the painting. He moves others to view, think, reflect and receive the thoughts from within about the painting before he or she finally settles to buy an art work. Some after the meditative conversations change their mind and turn to another painting. The painter creates an opportunity to connect the painting with the life events of the buyer. Th painter is a formator of human thoughts at a deeper level. He lives and works at the edge, but is impacting those who live in the mainstream. One friend who spent about 90 minutes in the studio of the artist recalled how he was helped to choose a painting that corresponded with his inner reorientation from among the three paintings he had liked.
As I against this, I came across a shop keeper who sells pottery. He has his shop at a vantage position on the main road. Since the lock down last year, his sales dropped. The other shop keepers on the road side developed a strategy of stocking new pottery items for indoor gardening, which became popular during the COVID season. So they attract customers. This shop keeper who would be normally be seen on the road side to invite the shoppers to his shop, stoped being outside. He was not even seen in the shop often. He spent his time in his house which was behind the shop. His was a gradual journey to loneliness although he was located in a junction where the cars stopped to have refreshments in the restaurant adjacent to his shop. It is true that the sales had dropped, but he surrendered to the circumstance. The mud pots do not attract the attention of everyone, but only a few. So it is a merchandise with the risk of limited sales. To be innovative while engaged in a trade, which is at the edge of merchandise, would need that the shop keeper draws people from the mainstream to think about 'going green'!
While living or working at the edge, it provides many opportunities to connect with the mainstream to bring refreshments and inducements to people who live like being on a conveyer belt.
Those who choose to live in the edge are people who through their experiences and encounters would crystallise deeper quest to consider and present them to others in a way they too can feel enriched.
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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