I’ve been thinking about a saying a former colleague would say to me: “Kiera, you can’t make chicken soup out of chicken shit.” It’s the pessimists approach to lemons, I suppose. And it makes sense. You can, however, make manure which might be less appealing than soup or lemonade, but is also just as useful. I’m not a “when life gives you lemons” kind of person, but I could be a manure kind of one. It might not be the solution you want, it might not be the most obvious one, but if there’s a plan to be made, I’ll make it. As we say in South Africa “‘n boer maak ‘n plan” (a farmer makes a plan) – how appropriate. 

And while this metaphor guides my practical stance on life, it’s another chicken that guides my moral one.

I grew up with my father often repeating “the chicken sees”. This became a family maxim. It’s based on the story by Ram Dass:

There’s a Sikh story about a holy man who gave two men each a chicken and said: “Go kill them where no one can see.”

One guy went behind the fence and killed the chicken.

The other guy walked around for two days and came back with the chicken.

The holy man said: “You didn’t kill the chicken?”

The guy said: “Well, everywhere I go, the chicken sees.”

I don’t have a religion, perhaps the closest I’ll get is this all-seeing chicken.