It was morning, and the new sun was shining gold across the gentle sea. A crowd of a thousand seagulls(海鸥) were fighting for bits of food. But far away from these birds, Jonathan Seagull was practicing flying alone.
Most seagulls don’t trouble themselves to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get food and come back. For most seagulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this seagull, however, flight is much more important than eating. More than anything else, Jonathan Seagull loved to fly.
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make oneself popular with other birds. Even his parents were unhappy.
“See here, Jonathan,” said his father not unkindly. “Winter isn’t far away. If you don’t study how to get food, you might die of hunger in the future. Flying is all very well, but you can’t eat flight, you know.”
Jonathan understood what his father meant. For the next few days he tried to act like the other seagulls; he really tried, screaming and fighting with other seagulls for fish and bread. But he couldn’t make it work.
“It’s all so worthless,” he thought, “I could be spending all this time learning to fly. There’s so much to learn!”
It wasn’t long before Jonathan seagull was off by himself again, far out at sea, hungry, happy, learning. The subject was speed, and in a week’s practice he learned more about speed than the fastest seagull alive.