A different kind of story about watching birds. The essay painted an bittersweet word picture that juxtaposed criminals serving long prison sentences against a bird making her nest and raising her chicks until they were old enough to fly. Maybe exposing people from the youngest age to the struggles of those who are vulnerable could help raise the overall of amount of compassion there is in the world. Planting a seed, watering it, fending off the elements that the seedling must fight to have a chance - not quite as lively as watching a bird nest but still a lesson in care and compassion. Not having had those opportunities to leaven the soul could make it hard and prone to doing things that see a person end up in prison. Reading this story reminded me of my friend L who changed her phone number to get away from an abusive ex-boyfriend who refused to leave her alone.
Luckily for her, he lived too far away to pose any physical threat. She just needed his voicemails and texts to stop, And with the new number that goal was accomplished but a new issue arose. She kept getting collect calls from the local prison where an inmate was trying to reach whomever had her number before. Maybe that person had wanted a break from whomever was behind bars, maybe they were deceased. Either way, they were no longer reachable but L kept getting these calls. After a while they stopped. Maybe the person's prison sentence had ended, maybe some other resolution had occurred. The flying away of the chicks from the nest is a form of resolution too - it transitioned the observers trapped in their cells from one state to another, much like those calls that finally stopped coming to L's phone.
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