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Karson Culver

Professor Mullen

Honors Forum

24 November 2020

Embracing the Birds

In my experience, time is a collection of seemingly mundane seasons with intermittent

periods of happiness, pain, confusion, and love. Within these seasons, there are specific moments

that you wish you would have saved, and those that you did. Einstein’s Dreams by Alan

Lightman provides an illustration of this where time is a swift bird that many desire to capture to

cease time for a moment. These birds are rarely caught, but when they are, “the precise

placement of family and friends, the facial expressions... [or] the captured smell of cinnamon or

white double violets” are savored (p. 137-138). Time moves for me in this sense, and there are

three memories in my life where I caught a delightful bird, being the days I celebrated senior

night for softball, graduated from high school, and established a relationship with Jesus.

It’s interesting how time seems to move far too slow when we are young, yet sprints

away as we grow older, resulting in abrupt endings to eras of life. This phenomenon happened at

the ending of my softball career. I can remember pausing to take it all in; the screaming fans, my

carefree teammates, and my loving parents, all next to me through it all. In this memory, my

feelings were bittersweet in that I was sad my softball days were coming to an end, yet

immensely grateful for all of the happiness I had from playing. I caught a bird in this moment,

for birds can be trapped by love and reminiscence of things that have been a part of us for as long

as we can remember and then are suddenly finished forever. It is in these end times where one
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becomes aware and present, latching intensely onto their memories. Just as the ending of softball

revealed this to me, my high school graduation proved to impact me similarly.

My high school graduation was ingrained in me from the moment I began school; I was

not just me, but I was also the class of 2020. Because of the identifying force of this date, it was

unsurprising that in this memory I would find a bird. On this day, I was engulfed in a sea of

young adults I had grown with, all united around one purpose. We endured, we persevered, and

we achieved greatness that led us to throw our caps into the sky, signifying the end to the class of

2020. Though this whole night was wonderful, my bird was caught not in the ceremony, but

instead at the tail end where I felt free; I had reached and achieved a long-awaited goal. I believe

it can be said, then, that birds are found not only in the endings of the things we love but also

when we complete a dream. In this memory, my bird was captured at the end of a goal, but it is

also true that birds are caught at the start of purposeful beginnings.

Without purpose, time flies by with no direction. This was true for me until I found Jesus.

I can remember sitting in my bedroom with my Bible open, crying because I had found my faith,

effectively encasing a bird in the process. This memory was the turning point of my life, for I

finally had something bigger than myself to live for. Time stopped and I was able to “delight in

the moment now frozen” as all of my other worries melted away (p. 137). This memory led me

down the path I am on today, and I would be completely different without it. As such, I have

learned that a third way to capture a bird in time is in the moments of new beginnings where

everything feels different around and inside of us. These birds are the hardest to capture for me,

but they are the most beautiful and timeless when caught.

The bird vignette in Einstein’s Dreams is a beautiful way to look at time. It showed me

that there are key moments, such as my senior night, graduation, and faith, that have stuck with
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me to this day. From these events, I learned that birds can be captured in moments where

something that has been a major part of us dies, where a goal that was long-awaited is reached,

and where a new beginning sprouts and life is fundamentally changed. Each of these memories,

though they may lose vividness over time, are important; after all, “time flutters and fidgets and

hops with [the] birds”, so when a bird is caught, it becomes a cardinal memory (p. 137).