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Monitor Daily
August 16, 2025
Lessons from bird-watching

We can learn a thing or two from watching birds, as our inimitable essayist Murr Brewster shows us with her usual wit this morning. It’s not just about learning to recognize feathers and calls, but also about the aspiration and freedom that enable humanity to soar above the challenges of the day – whether that’s a long war in need of resolution, wild horses and teenagers in need of support, or a self-absorbed music producer retuning his heart to make room for family. “Hold fast to dreams,” poet Langston Hughes once wrote. “For if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird / That cannot fly.”

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