NEUROनिवारण

I went back to the park this morning as usual, the laps around the track, the familiar faces, the dogs, the flowers you stop noticing after a while.

And then, halfway through my walk, I looked up.

Several green parrots, sitting in the green trees, chattering. Not loud. Not performing. Just a soft, muffled sound, like a quiet conversation they were having with no one in particular. The people around me slowed down. A few stopped. We’re all so used to the pigeons and the sparrows that something this ordinary, a bird, just a bird, felt almost like a surprise.

The weather helped. It’s peak summer here, but this morning had a different feel to it: clouds covering the worst of the heat, a cool wind moving through, the kind of air that makes you think it might rain and somehow that makes everything a little more bearable.

But it was the parrots that stayed with me.

I think what I liked most was that they weren’t doing anything remarkable. They were just there, being parrots, in the background of a morning that could have looked like every other morning. And somehow that was the whole point, that if you show up, sometimes you discover that things still exist. Quiet things. Green things in green trees, just talking to themselves, adding a little serenity to the track you’ve walked a hundred times before.

That’s enough for today. Go outside if you can.