“What are you doing?” the Wise Owl asked the Little Book Bird after she had been bustling around a large bush for some time.
“I’m looking for an idea!” the Little Book Bird replied busily.
“Hmm… What idea? And why are you looking for it… in a bush?” the Wise Owl asked, surprised.
“It… from… me!” came the Little Book Bird’s voice from deep inside the bush.
“I did not quite catch that,” said the Wise Owl.
“Oof!” The Little Book Bird finally climbed out of the bush and sat down beside the Wise Owl. “It ran away from me after all! Or hid so well that now I cannot find it!” she chirped crossly.
“Hmm…” the Wise Owl said, surprised again. “Please explain which idea you are looking for. And why you decided it had hidden from you… in a bush.”
“Where else would it hide? And it is definitely not alone in there!” the Little Book Bird chirped crossly again.
“Today I was sitting here and thinking about where ideas come from and where they disappear to,” she began to explain.
“I woke up in the morning, and an idea came to me – to fly over to visit Uncle Starling and eat cherries in his garden. Then I had an idea to play with my friends, so I flew to them. Then another idea appeared – to make up a funny little rhyme. Then came the idea to check whether Mrs. Bustard’s chicks had hatched yet – remember, we visited her when we were traveling through the first book about birds? But suddenly there was another idea – to fly to the Author and ask her to invent a new game…” the Little Book Bird rattled on and on.
“Oh,” the Little Book Bird sighed. “And then I had more ideas and more… They appeared from somewhere and disappeared somewhere else before I could do anything with them. And I did not even get to find out whether any of them were really interesting or funny. Maybe one of them was important! But which one?”
“How will I know if I have forgotten some of them? Where can I find them? So I decided to look for the place where ideas hide. I have looked everywhere. But I still have not found it,” the Little Book Bird finished sadly.
“But why this bush?” the Wise Owl asked.
“Because I already checked the others. They are not there. I will keep looking, and maybe I will find them after all! Maybe they are sitting somewhere, waiting for me. What do you think?”
“I think it is possible that some of them really are waiting for you to come back to them,” the Wise Owl said with a smile. “But definitely not in a bush.”
“Why not in a bush?” the Little Book Bird asked, surprised.
“It would be uncomfortable and lonely for them there without you. Just imagine: they would be hiding in the bushes, and you would not know where exactly, so you would never find them,” the Wise Owl replied.
“Then where are they? And how can I stop them from running away from me?”
“Some ideas simply fly in to say hello, make a little noise, and fly away again. But others – the ones you like, the ones that stay with you, make you laugh, or surprise you – are better kept close. They need a place. You can write them down, leave a little sign, or draw them, so they do not run off and get lost.”
“What an idea!” the Little Book Bird cried happily. “Now my ideas will never run away from me!”
The Wise Owl smiled.
“Sometimes an idea can become the beginning of a new journey,” he added. “The important thing is to save it in time.”