The Eagle that never soar

Here's an interesting African Fable I read from a forum.

The Eagle that never soar

A man found an eagle's egg and put it into the nest of a prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life, the eagle, thinking he was a prairie chicken, did whatever the other prairie chickens did. He scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. He clucked and cackled. And he flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers no more than a few feet off the ground. After all, that's how prairie chickens were supposed to fly.

Years passed. The eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the cloudless sky. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong wooden wings.

"What a beautiful bird!" said the eagle to his neighbor. "What is it?"

"That's an eagle - - the chief of the birds," the neighbor clucked. "But don't give it a second thought. You could never be like him."

So the eagle never gave it another thought. And it died thinking it was a prairie chicken."


So do you dare flip those wings of yours?