The dumb bird can get the worm too

My dad used to say to me as a kid, “Early bird gets the worm.”

I used to wake up on Saturday mornings to the sound of a saw hacking down the overgrown branches, only to fall asleep, wake up 2 hours later and see my driveway covered in sticks and leaves.

The early bird got the branches cut, but the late bird (me) had to pick them allllll up wearing gloves 3 sizes too big.

One day, we dug that early bird, his early grave.

We weren’t prepared for that. We buried him in the cheapest coffin available in the “budget section”. It was a knock to our pride as we looked through pages of a glossy pamphlet with every kind of beautifully stained, wooden vessel that we could never afford. If I couldn’t even afford a nice death, what was the point?

I spent the next 10 years of my life with a scarcity mindset. Despite cash flushing through my accounts, nothing would ever be good enough. I would never be like other “real rich” people. No mistake was ever my fault, and everything felt out of reach.

In one of the lowest points of my life, one of my best friends sat me down and told me a Chinese proverb.

“Bèn niǎo xiān fēi”. Dumb bird flies first.

A few years later, on my first day of my internship, my boss asked me, “What was the turning point for you?”

This is not what I said to him, but what I’ve found, is that by accepting my reality as a dumb bird, I could either stay infinitely miserable, or experiment with trying. There isn’t a precise turning point. It’s not dramatic, it’s not incredible, or what you may think is stereotypically “a rags to riches” success story. The “riches” came from someone else, and the “rags” were just normal clothes. The turning point was and is more like a plateau, extending far beyond what time is capable of capturing.

But along my travels, dancing around this plateau, I noticed something about dumb bird and early bird.

It turns out, they are the same bird.

That early bird needs to fly first, because it is so tired of being behind. So, so tired of being hungry. So fed up. The dumb bird then eventually gets the worm, because it decided to wake up early. Almost everyday. The dumb bird I guess, by definition, isn’t that dumb anymore.

But it’s not that simple. It’s hard. Reverting back to version 1 is as easy as CTRL+Z. And failure is a natural side-product of the miracle of trying. The fluctuation between one version and the next is a life-long struggle, and can’t be summed up with just, “Here’s before and voilaaaa, here’s after!”

My husband and I are currently watching Breaking Bad. There’s a scene that I really love. Take light of this advice, seeing that it is from a fictional drug distributor, but it’s still wise nonetheless.

“You are a wealthy man now. And one must learn to be rich. To be poor, anyone can manage,” says Gus Fring.

The scarcity mindset is a shackle difficult to break. It is a continuous battle between enduring for something better, and settling for something less. Yes, there are other things in the battle such as circumstances, connections, history — they all have their place.

However, the early bird gets to eat the worm, and I’m tired of being hungry.