Ovenbird : How High is Enough?

Ovenbird

This is an Ovenbird.  It’s a beautiful little thrush with a very distinctive song.  It’s a new bird for me, rarely seen where I live.  So it was a particular joy to find it on this expedition up into the mountains.  A birder on the trail had advised that I should look for it up ahead, and I was quite pleased when I found it.  During our chat, I was a little concerned I wouldn’t find it.  Obviously birds have a tendency to fly off.  And too, he seemed pretty expert, and maybe I’m… still learning.  Reflecting as I hiked further up, I was a bit conflicted.  Did I want to see the ovenbird for its own sake?  Or was my hope more a function of simply justifying myself as a “serious guy?”  Was it just about being in the club, about not missing out?

The Tower of Babel is a fascinating cautionary tale.  We usually focus on the consequences.  The very word “babble” means to speak unintelligibly, to communicate in such a way that it’s impossible for others to understand you.  Pre-Tower all humans spoke a shared language and utilizing that power, attempted to build a tower in the sky to make a name for themselves.  God - for reasons that are tantalizingly elided - saw this as overreach.  People were scattered around the globe and their languages made incompatible.  Humans’ “wings were clipped.”  We learn from Babel about the limits of personal goals and certain natural boundaries at which point we say simply, “that’s enough.”  This high and no higher.

More broadly the question we face - often - is, “What is enough?”  What is the inherent value we require to experience satisfaction?  Must we “make a name for ourselves” more than others, or is it sufficient to evaluate our own situation and meet that hurdle?  Each of us has our own history, experience, and culture leading to different expectations and different needs.  Do we want to experience things for their own sake, or is it a question of maintaining some sense of parity with others?  And is the situation complicated when there is an “in-crowd” from which we feel excluded?  I hope - and I still question - that my joy of the Ovenbird was from its own sweet babbling rather than my desire to be part of the crowd building a modern Babel.