My two year old son and I took a barefoot walk the other day. The grass felt like it had been sprayed down with warm water. The air was lush with the smell of sweet green things and wet earth; surrounding and filling us until we almost felt cradled in the wafts of some warm wet eternal breath. One by one, the scattered clouds above us drifted across the face of the sun, making us feel like we walked in the warm gaze of some benevolent blinking immortal.

We trekked around the back of my old house where the yard becomes a disorganized garden. We inspected apple trees and pear trees. We sampled unripe grapes. We picked blackberries along the fencerow. It felt like we walked a piece of earth suddenly thrust up in a cataclysmic lunge into new universal light. I decided not to cross the fencerow to my neighbor’s farm almost in fear of falling off my world.

We turned to walk back just as two plump bluebirds sailed down from the utility pole behind the garage to perch on my clothesline. Their sudden appearance with a flash of vivid blue seemed a little too flamboyant, almost intrusive. From the vantage of the clothesline they surveyed the grass beneath them. Then with a flutter, like a tiny blue eagle, one bird dropped to the earth and taloned a grasshopper pecking it once or twice for good measure. The little bird then rose about a foot off the earth and dropped its prize, only to talon it again and then retreat with it to the top of the utility pole. First one bird, and then the other, as if precisely choreographed, repeated this hopper harvesting dance, the same moves in the same order, a half dozen times in the next hour. I found myself admiring their efficiency and precision.

Beside me, my son burst into a squeal and giggle fit, stomping his feet and scrunching up his face. A grasshopper had landed on his arm and he had managed to get hold of it for an instant. The insect had wriggled free and exploded out of his hand. Now there were hoppers all around him, as he waved his arms and jumped up and down clumsily trying to catch another one. Swept into his joy, I forgot about the birds.

Then I realized that the birds had seemed like an intrusion because they had briefly come between my son and I. It was our joy in each other’s companionship that had made the day what it was in the first place.

We human beings admire efficiency and precision because we believe that they ultimately lead to success. We want success because we believe it will bring us joy. Most of us even put joy aside in order to pursue success believing success will bring us greater joy. Alas, the joy of success is never lasting. We are forced to succeed anew. Eventually we just run out of time and energy, and death becomes our final success. Success is always the end of something. The beginning, the immortality we all seek, is already in us. It is the joy we willingly forsake in our quest for immortality.