Anne Lamott’s birds, Hemingway’s fishing line, and Tolkien’s long road offer a practical lesson in facing the work directly in front of us.

By Jill Szoo Wilson
Writer | Theatre Artist | Educator

Anne Lamott begins her book, Bird by Bird, with a story about her older brother, who at ten years old found himself facing a problem of his own making. Three months earlier, his teacher had assigned a report on birds. He waited until the night before it was due to begin. By then, the kitchen table was covered with books about birds, pencils, and binder paper, and the boy was close to tears. Their father sat beside him and offered the advice that would eventually give Lamott her title: “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird” (Lamott, 1994).

Anyone who has ever opened a blank document at 10 p.m. with something due in the morning can appreciate the theological implications of this scene.

Lamott uses the story to explain writing, but its usefulness extends well beyond the page. When a task feels enormous, we often race ahead mentally to everything still to be done. We picture the presentation, the revisions, the deadline, the questions people might ask, and every complication that could appear along the way. By the time we return to the thing actually in front of us, we are already tired from work that has not yet happened.

The bird offers a smaller unit of attention.

Literature returns frequently to this problem because characters rarely experience their lives as completed narratives. While a reader holds an entire novel in their hands, the people inside it have access only to the page they are living.

Ernest Hemingway builds The Old Man and the Sea around precisely that limitation. Santiago goes far into the Gulf Stream and hooks a marlin so large that he cannot bring it into the boat. For hours, then days, the fish pulls him farther from shore. Santiago’s hands cramp and bleed. Hunger and exhaustion narrow his world until survival depends upon attending to whatever his body and the fish require in the immediate moment. He adjusts the line. He rests when he can. He eats enough to preserve his strength. His great contest with the marlin is lived through a succession of manageable physical acts (Hemingway, 1952).

Santiago cannot solve the whole problem at once. He can only respond to what the fish, the sea, and his own body demand from him in the moment.

That distinction changes how we understand resilience, which is usually recognized only after the difficult season has passed. Looking back, the scattered hours of that season gather into a story with a beginning, middle, and ending, and endurance can begin to look almost like a fixed quality: She was strong. He persevered. From inside the experience, resilience is usually far less dramatic. It may look like getting out of bed on a difficult morning or making the appointment you have been dreading. Some days, it’s simply reaching the end of Wednesday and realizing you made it through.

J.R.R. Tolkien understood this rhythm particularly well. By the final portion of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam’s journey toward Mount Doom has become physically punishing, and the great sweep of their quest contracts into a series of immediate demands. Food is scarce, the landscape itself seems to work against them, and Sam keeps bringing his attention back to whatever will help them move a little farther: finding water, conserving what they have, or helping Frodo continue when his strength begins to fail. Eventually even walking becomes too much for Frodo, and Sam carries him (Tolkien, 1955).

The fate of Middle-earth may depend upon their journey, but Sam still has to figure out what to do with the next few feet of ground.

This is one reason enormous problems become easier to bear once we give the immediate task a specific verb. “Finish the project” can paralyze. Open the document. Write the paragraph. Send the email. Those actions have clear parameters. A person can tell when they’re finished.

The same thing happens when life feels uncertain. Anxiety likes to drag tomorrow into the room early, complete with imagined conversations, possible disasters, and contingency plans for problems that have not happened. We can spend an entire morning reacting to a future that exists only in our heads. Sometimes the wiser move is to stay with the next actual demand: answer the email, make the call, finish the page, and let tomorrow arrive before we start managing it.

Lamott’s father could have lectured his son about procrastination, which would have been entirely justified and spectacularly useless at that particular moment. The birds were still due.

So he helped him begin.

Sometimes the whole journey deserves our attention. We need plans, deadlines, maps, and some idea of where we’re going. Then comes the ordinary work of getting there. Santiago holds the line. Sam takes another step. A ten-year-old boy opens the first book about birds.

And somewhere in our own pile of unfinished things, one bird is usually waiting to be written.

What is the bird in front of you today?

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References

Hemingway, E. (1952). The old man and the sea. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Lamott, A. (1994). Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life. Pantheon Books.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1955). The return of the king. George Allen & Unwin.