In the morning, the rising sun shines on the quiet sea, and the rippling microwaves shine with golden light. On the sea one mile offshore, a fishing boat was advancing with the waves, which was the signal for breakfast. Nearly a thousand seagulls flew over, chasing each other and fighting for food.Another busy day has begun. But away from the fishing boat and the coast, Seagull Jonathan Livingston is practicing flying alone.A hundred feet up, he stretched out his webbed feet, raised his mouth, and flexed his wings.When the wings are bent, the speed can be slowed down.But now, he flew more and more slowly, so slow that he could hardly hear the wind in his ears, and so slow that even the sea under his feet seemed to be still.He narrowed his eyes, concentrated, held his breath, and tried to...bend...just another inch...and then, his feathers stiffened, he lost his balance, and fell.

You know, seagulls never wobble or lose their balance when they fly.Losing balance in the air is a shameful thing for a seagull, and it is a very dishonorable thing. But Jonathan didn't feel ashamed. He spread his wings again, still trembling and bending hard - slowing down a little by little, losing his balance again - he was not an ordinary bird. Most seagulls only want to learn the simplest flying skills-how to fly out from the shore to find food and fly back again.For them, the important thing is not to fly, but to forage.But for this seagull, the important thing is not to eat but to fly.Jonathan loves flying more than anything.

He found that ideas like his were unacceptable among his kind.He practiced so alone all day, low-flying and gliding hundreds of times, that even his parents were worried about him. He himself doesn't know why, but as long as he keeps flying at a low altitude of less than half a wing above the water, he can stay in the air for a longer period of time with less effort.When he glides down, he doesn't stretch out his feet and splash into the sea like ordinary birds, but he curls his feet close to his body and skims across the sea surface, leaving a long ripple on the water surface.He curled up his feet and glided to land on the beach, and then measured the distance of gliding on the beach. His parents saw him and were really worried about him.

"What's the matter, Joe? What's the matter?" asked his mother. "Isn't it so hard to be like the other seagulls, Joe? Pelicans and albatrosses fly low, what do you do? Why don't you eat some? You're skinny, boy!" "I don't care about being skinny, Mom. I just want to know what I can and can't do in the air." "You see, Jonathan," said his father gently, "winter is coming, and there will be fewer boats, and the fish on the sea will go to the bottom. If you must learn, learn how to forage. Flying is of course good, but you can’t eat gliding. Don’t forget, the purpose of your flying is to eat.”

Jonathan nodded resignedly.For the next few days, he tried to be like the other seagulls; he made a serious attempt, squawking and fighting for food with the flock around the pier and fishing boats, diving into the sea to grab some slices of bread and rotten fish.But he couldn't stand it. "This is so boring," he thought, deliberately throwing a hard-earned carp to a hungry old seagull chasing him. "I could spend all that time learning to fly. So much to learn!" Soon, Jonathan went out alone again.He flew to the far sea, studied hungry, and was very happy. The lesson is speed.After a week of practice, he had learned more about speed than any living seagull.

From a thousand feet in the air, he flapped his wings vigorously and plummeted towards the waves, so he understood the reason why seagulls don't plummet.In six seconds, he was moving at seventy miles an hour.At this speed, the wing will lose its balance when it lifts up. This happens repeatedly.No matter how careful he was, he used all his abilities, but if the speed was too fast, he would lose control. Fly a thousand feet in the air.He went full speed ahead first.Then it turned around, flapped its wings, and descended vertically.But every time it was the same, as long as the wings were lifted, the left wing would always lose its balance, so he flipped to the left suddenly, and just regained his balance, the right wing lost control again, so he flashed to the right like a spark, spun around and fell straight down .

Raising the wings is really a problem, no matter how careful he is, he can't do it.He tried ten times, and ten times it was the same, and as soon as he reached seventy miles an hour, he lost control, became a shaggy mass, spun around and plummeted into the water. Drenched in water, he finally realized that the key was to keep the wings still when flying at high speeds—drumming the wings to fifty miles an hour and holding them still. He tried again from two thousand feet.As soon as he reached fifty miles an hour, he rolled over and swooped down, mouth down, wings fully spread, motionless.It was very laborious to do so, but very successful.In ten seconds, he hit ninety miles an hour.Jonathan sets a world record for seagull flight!

But the victory was short-lived.Just as he was about to change his flying posture and change the angle of his wings, he suddenly lost control and suffered a crushing defeat.At ninety miles an hour, as if dynamite, Jonathan exploded in mid-air, crashing headlong into the brick-hard sea. When he woke up, it was already night.He floats on the moonlit sea.His wings were as heavy as rough lead, but the weight of defeat weighed on his back heavier than lead.He raised a faint hope: that the weight would drag him gradually to the bottom of the sea, and end it all. As he sank in the water, a strange hollow sound suddenly sounded in his heart.There is no other way out.I am a seagull.I am limited by my natural condition.If God really wanted me to know the secrets of flying, then I should have a brain like a nautical chart; if I really wanted to fly fast, I should have the short wings of a falcon, and eat nothing but mice instead of fish.My father was right.I shouldn't do this stupid thing again.I should fly back to the flock and be a poor, limited-talented seagull.

The voice died away, and Jonathan gave in.Seagulls are supposed to stay on shore at night.He swore that he would be an ordinary seagull in the future.This will make everyone happy. Wearily, he took off from the dark water and headed for land, thinking: Fortunately, I have learned to fly low and save effort. No, he thought again.I want to make a clean break with the past, and I want to make a clean break with what I have learned.I'm just a gull like other gulls, and I'm going to fly like them.So he rose to a hundred feet with difficulty, beat his wings harder, and flew towards the shore.

He felt better after he made up his mind to be another gull in the flock.From now on, the force that drives him to study has nothing to do with him. From now on, there will be no challenges and no failures.All is well, as long as you stop thinking about it and fly through the darkness towards the light on the beach. Darkness! The hollow voice exclaimed again.Seagulls never fly in the dark! Jonathan wasn't paying attention.All is well, he thought.The moonlight and lights are shining on the sea, emitting a string of luminous light into the night, the surroundings are so peaceful and quiet...

Come down! Seagulls never fly in the dark!If you want to fly in the dark, you should have a pair of owl eyes!You should have a mind like a nautical chart!You should have the short wings of a falcon! In the dark night a hundred feet up, Jonathan the Seagull blinked.His pain, his resolution, all at once vanished. A pair of short wings.A pair of short wings of a falcon! This is the answer!What a fool I am!What I lack is a pair of short wings. What I should do is to fold my wings as much as possible and fly with only the wingtips!Isn't this just short wings! He jumped two thousand feet from the black sea without thinking about failure or death.He held his forewings close to his body, exposing only the narrow, streamlined tips of the wingtips to the wind, and then dived vertically. The wind roared in his ears like a beast.Seventy miles an hour, ninety miles, one hundred and twenty miles an hour, faster and faster.At one hundred and forty miles an hour, the tension in the wings was not as great as it was at seventy.With a slight bend of the wingtips, he easily changed his dive position, skimming the waves like lightning, like a gray cannonball in the moonlight. He squinted his eyes into two thin slits against the wind, his heart was full of joy, at a speed of one hundred and forty miles an hour!I can still control it!If I were to dive from five thousand feet instead of two thousand feet, I don't know how fast it would be... The oath I just made has been forgotten, and it has been blown away by the gust of wind.Yet he feels no guilt for breaking his vow.Only a good-for-nothing seagull keeps that vow.A seagull with a superior academic performance would not keep such an oath.