The Eagle and the Prairie Chicken

"A man found an eagle's egg and put it into the nest of a prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life, the eagle, thinking he was a prairie chicken, did whatever the other prairie chickens did. He scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. He clucked and cackled. And he flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers no morethan a few feet off the ground. After all, that's how prairie chickens were supposed to fly.

Years passed. The eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the cloudless sky. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong wooden wings.

"What a beautiful bird!" said the eagle to his neighbor. "What is it?"

"That's an eagle - - the chief of the birds," the neighbor clucked. "But don't give it a second thought. You could never be like him."

So the eagle never gave it another thought. And it died thinking it was a prairie chicken."

How tragic : built to soar into the heavens , the chief of the fowls of the air. This eagle settled for being a prairie chicken. In this world it is easy to live like prairie chickens . It's easy to opt for a wrong way of life. Thinking all the while that because everyone is doing it it is right. 
Chuck Swindoll 

I listened to this on Insights for living and it really moved me. 

Mark Twain: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover”