Plato used the idea of an aviary as a way to explain his theory of knowledge. With a little modification the aviary is a great metaphor for people who desire to think more positively.

Imagine you are at the zoo and you visit the aviary. The aviary is a large steel structure that contains birds of many kinds. Imagine you are the zoo keeper and it is your job to collect birds from the surrounding environment and place them in your aviary.

The aviary represents your mind, and every bird represents concepts and thoughts in your mind. Your conscious self is the zoo keeper.

Now imagine that some of the birds are colored black and the other birds are the colored white. Black and white represent negative and positive thoughts respectively.

As a person who is pursuing a more positive outlook, you can imagine that your goal as a zoo keeper is to collect as many white birds as possible. In addition, you are to let as many black birds free as possible.

The end goal is to have as many white birds in your aviary as possible.   

Discuss this post in the Happy Forum.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.