The Seagull and the Mouse

Writes Paulo Coelho in The Winner Stands Alone:

A seagull was flying over a beach, when it saw a mouse. It flew down and asked the mouse:

'Where are your wings?'

Each animal speaks its own language, and so the mouse didn't understand the question, but stared at the two strange, large things attached to the other creature's body.

'It must have some illness,' thought the mouse.

The seagull noticed the mouse staring at its wings and thought:

'Poor thing. It must have been attacked by monster that left it deaf and took away its wings.'

Feeling sorry for the mouse, the seagull picked it up in its beak and took it for a ride in the skies. 'It's probably homesick,' the seagull thought while they were flying. Then, very carefully, it deposited the mouse once more on the ground.

For some months afterwards, the mouse was sunk in gloom; it had known the heights and seen a vast and beautiful world. However, in time, it grew accustomed to being just a mouse again and came to believe that the miracle that had occurred in its life was nothing but a dream.

There are times when some incidences that happen to us, seem like a dream.

I was in love once, and she was someone I knew back in college. We spent the best of our times together… dating… loving… doing things that I am embarrassed to mention to my fellow nopkins. And we were in love. But it didn't work out.

Come to think about it, we were like the seagull and the mouse. We didn't understand each other. But she took me to heights unimaginable. She gave me life. We needed each other for the moment and as it passed we moved on our own way. But I was left like the mouse… with just the dream of the miracle, the magic that had happened in my life.

That magic moment is not there anymore. I have learned to live my life without any expectation of that kind of magic anymore. The magician is no longer there in my life, nor is the magic. It was a dream well dreamt.