Stability Is Not Immobility
This hawk, this two to three pound creature, shattered my perspective of what stability is and what it is not.
I spotted a red-tailed hawk early one morning up on Twin Peaks. It hovered, motionless, riding the wind above me as I slogged along on my run to the peak and then back home.
It was a beautiful, freeze-frame moment as The City, bridge, and bay spread out before me in the early morning quiet and fog-free skyline. Even the hawk sat still in the sky as I alone moved through this living picture of a moment.
And then a realization struck me. Nothing about this hawk was still. A thousand opposing forces were fighting against each other—updrafts, downdrafts, tiny muscle-mechanics in the hawk's wings, tail, its entire body quivering, contracting, and extending to stabilize itself.
The appearance of graceful stability in this creature was an intense battle between powerful opposing forces.
My perception of movement, of progress—in the world around me and within myself—is interpreted relative to my surroundings and therefore skewed.
I zoomed out further still in my mind. I had long thought of stability as more or less the lack of movement. An inert force or strength. A thing that is big enough or strong enough is stable. A thing that is light or weak is not.
But this hawk, this two to three pound creature, shattered my perspective of what stability is and what it is not.
Stability is not simply the lack of movement; it is an active force. A cultivated skill.
And the perception of stability versus movement is always relative to the movements of the people and world around me.
Often, when we feel unmoored—from our job, our community, our city, or even family—it is due to the relative movement of one or more individuals. That may be me. It may be someone else. But I feel it nonetheless.
And the ability to remain stable, like this hawk skillfully riding the wind above Twin Peaks requires intentional effort, training, focus over time in order to ride through the windy gusts of life.
I ran home with a dream to cultivate a stability here in San Francisco that can ride the wild gusts of life in San Francisco with the same graceful stability of this hawk.
“Stability is not immobility.”