For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.

You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel.

For a moment, off balance, was I annoyed? Anger is always fear, I thought, and fear is always fear of loss. Would I lose myself if he made those choices? It took a second to settle down: I'd lose nothing. They'd be his wishes, not mine, and he's free to live as he wants. The loss would come if I dared force him, tried to live for him and me as well. There'd be disaster worse than life on a bar stool.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.

Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the alhatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!" "I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know.

We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks.