They Cannot See The Bird

But beware: No one is stranger than a person who “sees” in a community that is “blind.”

- Leonard Sweet. 

"....Bob Olmstead....one busy afternoon driving on a Reno, Nevada, city street when a small, wounded bird wandered out into the highway. It huddled on the pavement as the cars whizzed past it and over it, tires somehow missing it. I glimpsed the bird just as the tires of my car straddled it. At that moment I made a rash decision. I decided to rescue the bird. I stopped the car, jumped out, and held up my hands to stop traffic. If I could “shoo” the bird over the curb and into the hedge of bushes, it would be safe, at least from traffic. When I approached the bird it scooted away, but it didn’t scoot in a straight line. Whether it was too young to fly, whether its wing was injured, I do not know. But every time I bent down and waved my arms the bird would half hop, half fly in a crazy circle and end up back in the middle of the road. I could not catch it and I could not get it to run into the bushes. By this time I had a considerable amount of traffic backed up. The close drivers were watching me with quizzical or suspicious expressions. Farther back, horns were honking. I kept thinking, “Just another minute and I’ll catch the little bird or it will run off into the bushes.” So I continued running around in the street, stooped over, flapping my arms, chasing that little feathered thing. It was only then that I realized the other drivers could not see the bird!

 Visionaries are like that. Others cannot see what they see."