Cardinals and Potatoes

Taking advice from images…

Last week Joe saw a brilliantly red cardinal land in the middle if the street directly in front of his oncoming car. He stopped. Waited for the bird to alight.

Was there some kind of bread or seed or food in the road, I asked. No, he said. He just landed, looked around and then flew off.

Did he give you a message, I asked.

I didn’t ask, Joe said.

I believe there is a greater intelligence out there trying to guide us. That the universe is conspiring to help us. That regardless of how alone any one us feel, at any given time, we are not.

It appears otherwise for five reasons.

One. We prefer our advice to come in human form because it feels less woo-woo.

Two. We are more grounded in science than spirit as a culture.

Three. We prefer reducing complexity to what we know rather than opening it up to what we don’t know.

We prefer answers to questions.

Four. We move so fast we barely have time to eat lunch much less converse with cardinals about life advice..

Five: We have not been taught how to listen.

Here’s the thing.

It doesn’t really matter whether you believe your brain is inventing the cardinal’s answer or the universe has provided you with this message.

If you are open and willing to consider to non-linear solutions to vexing problems, if you are willing to see sideways you will see what no one else can.

The vast and powerful language of personal metaphor.

It is everywhere. All the time. Sometimes it lands directly in front of you to get your attention. Sometimes it requires you connecting the dots.

Here’s my example. Potatoes.

Whenever something comes across my cognitive horizon three times that normally is not anywhere in my consideration, I pay attention.

I listen.

I am at work having a conversation about a friend’s ex’s Irish heritage and how his relatives are not terribly joyous. In fact they are quite serious and blunt.

I say to her, as someone with a lot of Irish in me, well, that’s not totally true. What about all the literature and singing and partying?

We banter back and forth.

But as we talked, I thought of the Potato Famine of 1846 and the history of war and suffering. And that growing up in a history that riddled with hardship might create a greater sense of gravity.

The next morning, while running at the gym I saw an entire segment on the vast variety of potatoes and their various origins. That afternoon, while cleaning out the toy cabinet, I made the executive decision to give away our Mr. Potato Head.

And then the universe gives me a big wink.

During my cleaning break I open the fridge to get a seltzer and staring back at me are two small leftover potatoes.

That’s a lot of potato in a 24-hour period.

So, I sit down with my seltzer, think about Joe’s cardinal and my potatoes and ask for messages. What I get back is ironic, which I love. And not very glamorous for me, which I take to be a good sign I’m not making mine up.

The male cardinal’s (male because if his brilliant red) message for Joe: To be his most brilliantly colorful self. At a time when he has been more focused on seriously pushing the business forward and planning for our future, this is heartening.

Of course I get potatoes:)

But at a time when I have been intensely mapping out our goals as a company and family for months into the future, always five steps ahead of where we actually are, the message for me was:

Back to what sustains us today.

This was reiterated by a movie we watched two nights later. A kind of universal confirmation.

At the end of The Martian, Matt Damon says to an incoming class of freshmen NASA students.

“At some point, everything’s going to go South on you. You’re going to say, ‘This is it. This is how I end.’ Now, you can either accept that, or you can get to work. You have to solve one problem,” Damon explains, “and then solve the next problem, and then solve the next problem and if you solve enough problems, you get to go home.”

How do we sustain our selves? Day to day. Each new day.