Juan Salvador Gaviota: Betting On Oneself
It was dawn, and the new sun painted the waves of a calm sea with gold . This is how Juan Salvador Gaviota , by Richard Bach, begins . Thus, it begins, as life begins. Because the star king, together with the crowing of the rooster and some annoying alarm clock, announces the end of the night, just like this book, which inspires the soul and acts as a compass to face the mirror and question who we really are. Who we think we are
Bach, through Juan Salvador Gaviota, tells us about this process of recognition, about the encouragement in the form of a return on any investment we make in it. Because it will be ours, our own, worthy for us to teach. Worthy of pride, nothing of a freshly scoured self-esteem that we can slip down. This work, now a classic, also tells us about the difficulties involved in breaking with the established, about how powerful faith and passion can be to make a personal change and also within a society.
Why? There is always a why
The great searches are born from the great questions and it is that Juan Salvador Gaviota did not understand why, for example, when he flew over the water at heights less than half his wingspan, he could stay longer, with less effort. Juan had a passion and it was flying, fast and graceful. Thus these questions were for him a stimulus to experiment, observe and deduce.
Meanwhile, his mother asked him why it was so difficult for him to be like others. And it is that, Juan, above being like the others wanted to know, to know. I don’t mind being just bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what not. Nothing more. How simple is it? What a stripped-down truth! To be more or less than the other. Drink directly the happiness of the pleasure that comes from exploring your own limits. To grant that opportunity to you, just as we often give it to others.
And it was in his greatest moment of crisis that Juan Salvador Gaviota received his greatest inspiration. […] There would be no more challenges or more failures. And it was nice to stop thinking, and fly, in the dark, towards the lights of the beach. And while he flew and resigned himself, Juan Salvador Gaviota realized that in that darkness -only, in silence, muffled the echo of others-, he had managed to go further than any seagull: to fly in the dark.
And it is that many of the solutions that we find appear by insight . Suddenly, we would say. They appear after a time of reflection in which we live with the feeling of being stagnant. And when this occurs, everything seems so evident to us that we think that the profitable time has really been that moment and not the previous time, when it really is not. We have had to travel down many wrong paths and learn from them, to finally choose the correct one.
And after that “realizing” everything seems to fit. He found that by moving a single wingtip feather a fraction of an inch, it caused a smooth, wide curve at tremendous speed. Before he had learned it, however, he saw that when he moved more than one feather at that speed, it turned like a rifle bullet… and thus Juan was the first seagull to perform aerobatics.
Passion makes us also have something to contribute
A few years ago a girl who had chosen a certain MIR square told me that she had chosen it, not because it was the best center, but because it was the place where she believed she could contribute more. How few times do we choose this right? We opt for the option with which we can enrich the most and not enrich ourselves. What we often ignore, when we do not consider this variable, is that where we can contribute the most in the long run is also the option that will nurture us the most and best.
Juan Salvador Gaviota, when he makes his discovery, feels very happy for having found answers, for having improved, but also because he imagines that he will be able to teach the other seagulls. However, the reception that Juan receives is not good, the changes are like the Insights, many of them require a time of resistance.
One stage has ended, the time has come for another to begin
For those who overcome difficulties, and even courageously resist the misunderstanding of others, heaven awaits. But not the religious sky, but the sky that is born from that look in front of the mirror. Of the recognition and security that coherence gives between who we have wanted to be and who we have aspired to be. This, regardless of having achieved it.
This exercise in honesty is what rewards the end of the passion displayed and that is when we are ready for a new revolution. Because life, like Juan, is dynamic. Because every process completes us and leaves us incomplete at the same time, and it is the ability to move in this contradiction that drives away the feeling of emptiness that originates from the feeling of wandering aimlessly.
And in this, memory finally helps us. In the words of Juan Salvador Gaviota “Earth had been a place where he had learned a lot, of course, but the details were already hazy; I remembered something of the fight for food, and of having been an Exile ”. The important thing, the really important thing, is that Juan was never an exile from himself, from his own heart.
