Dear Jon,

I wrote my first letter to you last week and the whole experience of writing it was good. I felt challenged as I did so and moved to seek answers to the questions your life raises for me.

Today I have a single question.

“What caused you to seek perfection when all those about you had no perception that such a thing exists?”

I think it was Sully who told you that you are “a one in a million bird”. But did you ever stop to ask, “Why me?” Were you singled out by some greater force for an unknown reason?

It seems that there are those who are “one in a million”. Who are just wired differently, some would say driven, who are not satisfied to settle for life as they find it or to rest, satisfied, in the existence they have. And, like yourself, they are often found on the periphery of society. Outliers if you please.

I have thought long on this and can find no convincing reason why such people exist. Oh, so many feel life is futile and ask, “Is there not more to life than this”, but they do not progress beyond this assertion. Did not Jesus state that “Many were called, but few are chosen”? That there exists a call to improve life, to move to higher and better things but it is not being received. I think like you I believe that a better life is available for everyone and that shows up in you wanting to be a teacher, sharing the knowledge and joy of all you have learnt.

…inspire of his lonely past, Jonathon Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.

Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

But even then, only a few wished to learn or believe there was more to life.

Maybe we could better say, “Many are called but few chose to listen” for is it not the case that God, or the Universe, or the Great Spirit (I think you term this phenomenon “The Great Gull”), whatever one’s descriptor for the ultimate reality is, is always talking. I will use God as my term of choice. Is it not true that God is a noisy god? Does not all religious text recount how God speaks?

What was it you said. We are all “expressions of the Great Gull”. You know of the man Plato and his theory of Forms?

No?

Well he held to the belief that there exists timeless, absolute and unchangeable forms of all things, and these exist beyond the physical world. So, thinking of you, there is a perfect, limitless gull of which you are a pattern. Others, in a similar mode of thought would say there is Heaven where all is perfect and that we, man, were created perfect, in the beginning, only to fall away. There are numerous mythologies and belief systems that struggle to encapsulate the same idea.

Whatever! The notion that we can all be more than we are has existed for a long time. Many have taught it in one way or another. Some have listened.

You strove to impart the knowledge by teaching your students to fly. By taking something they loved and offering to make it even better. Bit by bit you drew them on until they were ready to leave flying behind and move still higher in their learning. Maybe that’s how we impart to ourselves and others the desire for perfection. Small steps. Needless to say, some will fall away, or reach a point of satisfaction and cease moving forward. Which brings me back to the thought that there are those who are wired differently and will make the whole journey in search of their highest being.

I have come to accept that there are only a small number who will pursue perfection to the end. Pushing the boundaries, testing their own limits over and over. Seeking to stretch those limits just a little more and then, a little more again. I guess it’s like those who climb mountains. It’s not for everyone. It’s hard work, it requires discipline, the weather is seldom pleasant and there is a demand for continual focus. It’s not for everyone. In fact it is for an extremely small number.

Maybe you are ‘one in a million’ and therefore I am glad I met you. An inspiration. An example. A pointer towards the possible. You were not distracted by the flotsam that crowds life, distracting and clouding sight. Providing a false idea of reality. Like clouds on a grey day hiding the sun. You believed in more until there was more.

So, I’ll sign off and continue to contemplate your example until I write again.

Yours, seeking the sunshine,

Wic