If you ask someone what special power they would like to possess, the majority of people will say they would like to fly. But I think maybe it’s not so much about power, but about play. They will tell you how they would dance in the air, dart from place to place, glide over all of nature’s beauty, dive from the trees, spread their wings and call it all home. And the pure magic would not be to overtake the birds, but play along with them.

I paint them all the time, so certainly I watch them. But I was delighted to find out that perhaps they were watching us.

There is a YouTube video of a crow finding a lid on a rooftop and sliding down, again and again. And I have to smile because didn’t I, we, bundle from head to toe and wave goodbye to our mothers from the warmth of the kitchen door, grab our plastic, sometimes metal, discs from the garage, drag them by the broken plastic handles and set off for the nearest hill. And didn’t I, we, imagine, even weighed down by all that bundling, that we indeed could fly. I never imagined the birds were watching.

And maybe that’s the super power we should all be wishing for — to see others. To have some empathy. To learn. And to take all that knowledge, and simply play along. After all, what’s it’s all for, if we didn’t have a little fun?