One seagull, dreams of flying better than a seagull has ever flown, instead of spending his days looking for scraps of food.
“Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly…This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self popular with other birds.”- Richard Bach
There is one seagull in a flock, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, who cares a lot less about scrounging for food than the other gulls, and cares more about learning how to fly well. He gets thrills from figuring out how to fly faster and more dangerously than any gull has flown before. He crashes a lot, but always gets up, fluffs his feathers, and begins again. The other gulls in the flock don't understand why he cares at all about this, and the elders take his determination in this as a sign that he does not care about the right things. They declare him an Outcast. He pleads, but they ignore him and send him away. He gets to a ‘Heaven’, how he call it, he finds other seagulls, who like flying like he does. Chiang (He is one bird who is in ‘Heaven’ and he teaches Jonathan to ‘fly’) teaches him to fly and Jonathan comes closer and closer to perfection. After practising some time he wants to return to the earth to teach other seagulls who would want to. He soon found several good flight students. Fletcher Gull (He is also a very questioning seagull who thinks that there must be more in life then just thinking of how to get food) was one of them, he has a desire to learn to fly. Jonathan teaches Fletcher to fly like Chiang has told him. Fletcher soon develops enough to take Jonathan’s place as an inspired, powerful teacher, and so Jonathan moves on to a higher level of consciousness.
To fly high and to fly free one must try to achieve excellence.
And the price needs to be paid for excellence. Excellence requires leaving the flock, being alone, and practising. And the practice requires "fierce concentration."
"You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past"- Richard Bach
Source : “Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story” — Richard Bach