Once on the west coast of Ireland there lived a seagull bird whose name was Seamus.
Seamus was a healthy, handsome, and intelligent seagull bird, but he was not able to fly.
When he was just a wee seagull bird, Seamus’s parents and siblings had been lost in a severe storm and he had no one to teach him.
He grew older and decided to try to learn by himself. He watched other seagull birds and, imitated them.
He ran along the ground and flapped his wings and hopped up and down, trying to get into the air, but nothing would happen, and the young seagull birds laughed at him because Seamus looked so funny.
Some of the older seagulls tried to teach him, but each one told Seamus a different way of learning to fly, and Seamus tried to think of all the ways each of the seagulls had told him:
“Flap your wings more, get your feet back, head straight,” and all the other instructions.
He was thinking so hard about what everyone had told him that he wasn’t able to get off the ground. He began to believe something was wrong with him, that he would never fly.
He tried going to the top of a cliff and jumping off, but he simply fell to the bottom. He went to higher cliff, over the sea, closed his eyes, and jumped.
Again, he fell.
Other seagulls took pity on Seamus and tried to take care of him.
But this made him feel more discouraged than ever . . .
One day, a very old and wise seagull flew in to the western coast where Seamus lived. He listened to Seamus’s problem and told him to climb to the top of a special cliff, the highest and steepest one. On the top of this cliff he would find a large boulder, and on this boulder was written a secret message. This was the message Seamus needed in order to fly, the wise bird told him.
No seagull had ever climbed such a steep cliff before. Seamus had to tie starfish to his feet to help him with the suction. He climbed slowly, painfully, and finally reached the top. He saw the large boulder.
On it was written:
What you believe — you can do!
Seamus looked down from the dizzying cliff and was terrified, but he closed his eyes and jumped. He started to drop, and as he did, he remembered to say to himself, “I believe I can fly, I believe I can fly.” He was so busy saying it that he forgot to doubt himself.
Instead of paying attention to all the different things he’d been told to do, he just did it. And he found himself flying — flying like any other seagull birds, with wings outstretched, gliding on the winds. It was his first time flying! It was the most wonderful moment of his life. He flew and
dipped and never once wondered if he was doing it right. Far below on the sand, the other seagulls, who were watching him, heard him sing out, “I can fly! I believe!”
