This is a Royal Tern.

Terns live on the beach and eat small fish close to the surface of the water. They are notably graceful. They hover, find their prey, and then sweep in. They are highly social, congregating after hunts, and highly competitive, often stealing each other’s food.

I admire the terns for their elegant hustle: They are struggling and striving, but they are poetry in motion.

They are aware of their prey (fish, crustaceans, squid)

They are aware of their competitors (other terns)

They are aware of their predators (larger birds and various land predators )

They make dangerous life look easy.

Many of us are adept at making dangerous life look easy.

When you strip away the facades, however, there’s drama beneath the surface.

We may have mastered our craft. We may have become expert warriors, but to get there we’ve taken many hits, and gotten many scars. And in some cases, we may still be bleeding.

We’ve grown callused hands and thick skin. We’ve cultivated deadened nerves and hardened hearts.

The problem is, you can’t necessarily turn that off when you want to feel something.

Life has given us a brilliant focus: we are battle ready.

We’re aware of our prey, our competitors, and our predators.

We’re looking for an opportunity, making sure no-one steals it, and making sure, while we are waiting to grab an opportunity, that no-one grabs us.

We want to be great.

We don’t want to be lunch.

But being battle-ready can come with a price.

If we only see the weak as prey, we can’t be instruments of compassion, or healing, or help. If we live to kill fish, we will never know fish, because they will run when they see us coming. What if a fish is destined to be your next best friend? Or the person who can help you learn something lifechanging? And all you want to do is devour them?

If we see our peers as competition, we won’t learn the power of teamwork. We won’t be able to help them get ahead or receive the help we need. And when a crisis comes up that requires solidarity, we’ll be busy worrying who the bird voted for, instead of realizing we both need to fly away from the storm.

If we see the strong as predators, we will never be able to benefit from their gifts or resources. We can learn from people who have accomplished things we haven’t. Sometimes, however, our own egos will lead us to declare anyone more successful than us as corrupt, or materialistic, or shallow. We don’t want to admit that there’s the possibility that anyone else worked harder, or smarter than we did, so we brand them as part of a broken system. And they may well be. But they may have some things we need and know some things we need to learn.

Getting caught up in the hustle can cause you to mistreat everyone around you.

Doubling down on tern life can make you forget that you are royalty.

I want to grab everything life has for me. I want to look good doing it. But not at the expense of my relationships. Not at the expense of my values or ethics.

I don’t want to become someone I don’t want to be to become someone I think I need to be.

Terns make the hustle look easy.

But it is hard.

And it probably should be.

Works Cited

“A Guide to the Birds along Florida's Shores and Beaches.” VISIT FLORIDA, 1 Jan. 1968, https://www.visitflorida.com/t....

“Royal Tern Overview, All about Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.” Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/....