BEHOLD THE NOBLE SPRING ROBIN

Behold spring. And behold the spring robin. Of the 10,000+ species of birds in the world and the 925 found in the US, the robin has found a special place in our hearts. As a sign of spring, and as a source of little wisdoms.

For instance, Mom always preached learning from the early-bird-that-catches-the-worm. However, Dad usually added but-think-of-being-the-early-worm. So you can understand why I grew up conflicted about being too aggressive. This in turn helps explain why I was the last kid on my block to learn how to climb trees and skitch winter rides on the back of passing cars. [If "skitch" has no meaning, you may disregard the rest of this].

I was reflecting on all this as I went out to pick up the three newspapers on our morning driveway. There I stood -- swathed in my periwinkle blue bathrobe -- eying the robin on our lawn who was eying me. This is not an infrequent early-hour encounter. Each morning I try to convey to my friend the red-breasted robin that I mean it no harm. Why I even circle wide around the newspapers to make this clear [a periwinkle circling which may confound my neighbors, but then I confound them anyway].

However, here's the point. And a tragic one at that.

The robin only has its instincts to tell it of my intentions. Anything I might say will not be able to overcome its natural instinct to preserve its own interests and space. Alas, no matter how wide and quiet my circling, most of my morning robins reject my overtures to be their friend.

So what...? So all too often people and nations react the very same way to any overtures of peace from anyone deemed an enemy. Consider Lincoln's overture to the Confederacy in his First Inaugural Address ...Chamberlain's peace-in-our-time salute to Hitler in the Munich Agreement of 1938...Martin Luther King's I-Have-A-Dream speech to the nation in 1963...Obama's Cairo declaration to Islam in 2009.

It's fruitless to explain any of this to my friends the robins, as they usually interpret my peculiar circling and awkward smiling as far too aggressive. So much like so many other overtures in our world. Those between political parties... religions ...families...husband and wife...peer and peer. Whereas my robins can be excused by reason of their lack of reason, what in God's name is our excuse?

Yes, I think I can hear the social Darwinians answering my plea. We are each meant to survive in this world, and thus our first and primary instinct is fear. This is where I like FDR's celebrated answer: "All we have to fear is fear itself...!" I shall quote him tomorrow morning. Who, I wonder, will our leaders find to quote?