The best way to understand Neurosparkle, is through the eyes of Nora the Neurosparkly Hummingbird

The hummingbird in Nicaragua didn’t look at the forecast for Quincy, IL. She didn’t look at the sky to consider her circumstances. The weather at the equator had not changed. There were no external cues to alert her that it was time.

Nothing had happened to set her off.

And yet that morning, when her wings started spinning, Nora took off on a journey that no one would ever believe…even if she had a million words to describe it.

From the day she was born, she simply followed her instincts. She flapped when they told her to keep flapping and stopped when they told her to perch. She didn’t analyze that 24 hour marathon flight any differently than she considered the torpor she would fall into at the end of each day.

She just kept doing what came naturally. 

How could she explain it? No one witnessed her as she took this same trip last fall… 2,100 miles straight. Alone. Oblivious to thoughts of doing anything else.

No one would see her do it this time either. Sometimes, she would find a place to perch along her journey while she waited for the wind to blow in her favor.

The locals would ask her about where she came from. They would laugh at her as she told them of the tropical glory of the parrots, a beach called Playa Yankee and her home in Nicaragua called Cielo del Colibri. After their chuckles slowed, their guffaws began after one of them, trying to keep a straight face, had ask her where she was headed now. Their disbelieving laughs drowned out her attempts to tell them about the majestic beauty of the eagles, a sanctuary called Eagle’s Bay and the lush beauty of her home on the Mississippi called Hummingbird Heaven.

Their laughs might have bothered her but Auntie Paige’s words rang in her ears, “Nora, one day you will take a journey that only you will see.”

She never when or how far the wind would carry her along when it blew, but she did not question what waited for her as she followed her true North.

She took the path of least resistance the whole way - the way Auntie Paige always knew she would.

For months she had spent her days flitting about the jungle surrounded by the sounds of the parrots and the other hummingbirds with their rainbow of colors shapes and sizes. One moment she was flitting to the next flower and the next moment she had flitted 500 miles over the Gulf of Mexico in one fell swoop.

Moment by moment she continued until the moment when she saw the familiar bridge that had loomed in her mind for the past season. Suddenly her little Hummingbird heart leapt in her little chest as she landed on Auntie Paige’s outstretched hand.

“Welcome back to Eagle’s Bay, little one.”

“Oh Auntie, they told me I was delusional! They said I was crazy when I told them what I have seen. They called me a know-it-all when I knew the things I know. But I kept telling them that it wasn’t all a dream.”

To understand Neurosparkle you must first understand Hummingbirds. In the following days, I will introduce the story of Nora the Neurosparkly Hummingbird and the lessons she and I have to share.