The Sky is Limitless for Birds to Fly

So, freedom isn’t necessarily about flying far away. It can also be about carving out a little blank space for yourself within the weight of life.

I always pay extra attention to the birds in the sky during dusk.

Especially those solitary shadows, against the vast, expansive backdrop of a sky dyed orange-pink by the setting sun—just a swiftly fluttering black dot. You don’t know why it left the flock, nor where it’s headed. It’s precisely this “not knowing” that formed my earliest imagination of freedom—a resolute departure, laden with solitude.

But as the years pass and observations accumulate, I’ve slowly come to taste the greatest illusion hidden within the saying “the sky is vast, let the bird fly.” We always think freedom is that boundless sky, a destination, a home. Yet the real shackles never come from the height of the sky, but from our imagination of “flight”—long since pruned into uniformity by the rules of the ground.

The soul I’ve seen most yearning for freedom was Ali.

In school, he was the most restless among us. Talking about Tibet’s snow-capped mountains or the deserts of the northwest, a fire would light up in his eyes, as if ready to ignite the dull textbooks and exam papers the next second. The future he described was “on the road,” “undefined like a bird.” Back then, we were certain he would live the life we didn’t dare to.

But five years after graduation, I met him again at a wedding. He was wearing a well-ironed suit, hair meticulously combed, handing out business cards bearing the title “Project Manager.” After a few drinks, the conversation inevitably returned to the old days. He laughed, mentioning those “black histories” in a self-deprecating tone, calling them “the folly of youth.”

“No choice, you have to land eventually,” he said, swirling the wine in his glass. His gaze swept past a small patch of gray sky outside the window, then quickly returned, settling precisely on the banquet table. “Mortgages, betrothal gifts, children’s education… birds don’t have to consider these. The sky is high, but you can’t just stare at the sky and ignore the ground beneath your feet.”

When he said this, there was no resentment in his tone, only a calmness verging on resignation. In that moment, I suddenly understood: the most complete farewell isn’t someone leaving for a distant place, but them personally bidding farewell to the passionate self they once were. It’s a silent taming: the breaking of the wings of the bird within. He flew into the course set by society’s clock, becoming a standard, qualified “person of the earth.”

His humanity, in the face of reality’s gravity, completed the most common compromise—safety is often more tempting than freedom.

Thus, the second half of “the sky is vast, let the bird fly” might be: the feathers are heavy, hard to soar far.

That “weight” is the mortgage, the responsibilities, the expectant gazes of others, the self-imposed “shoulds.” It’s the countless things we pick up with our own hands and willingly tie to our wings. We rub and polish this weight, eventually making peace with it, and call it “maturity.”

Yet, you can always catch glimpses of flight in the most unexpected places.

Old Chen, the security guard in our office building, is in his fifties, responsible for directing vehicles in and out. It’s an area of lifeless cement slabs. But his guard booth always holds a thick sketchbook.

During lunch breaks, while others scroll on their phones, he draws. He sketches sparrows hopping on branches, the profiles of hurried passersby, the whimsical clouds in the sky. The sparrows under his pen have alert, lively eyes; the clouds seem ready to float right off the page. In those moments, he isn’t in the booth; he’s in his own sky.

He didn’t quit his job to see the world. He’s never even left this city. But he preserved a slice of airspace no one can invade. His freedom isn’t in some faraway place; it’s in that pen, in those eyes skilled at capturing beauty.

So, true freedom was never about physically flying far away. It’s a kind of internal permission management—the ability, even under the weight we must bear, to still decide where our gaze falls; the ability, in the gaps between playing countless social roles, to still confirm the existence of “me”; the willingness, knowing full well the sky might be out of reach, to still flutter your wings once in the mud.

And that one flutter is the most beautiful resistance against all gravity.

The sky never promised every bird could fly to the end. It simply exists. And flight, in itself, is a choice, a posture, a yearning that never ceases, even when the wings are heavy.