Synergy

(A note to start: the formatting on this post is not cooperating with me and it's bugging me big time. Sorry for the lack of spaces. However, you get the idea...)

While out for a jog earlier this morning I rounded a cul-de-sac and stumbled upon a sight much like this one. I guess it's in the air (no pun intended). These birdies fleeing the coming cold for a warmer abode. Good for them. Can I do that too? Just for a few months? I don't mind the mild cold, but the bone-chilling, mind-numbing, teeth-hurting cold of late Dec/Jan/Feb is what gets me.

I digress.

This flock gave me cause to spend the remainder of my run analyzing why it is that these birds head for the warmer hills in such a beautiful formation. Wouldn't it be easier to just fly at their own pace and get there when they get there? And then I began to remember watching similar scenes as a little girl on the shores of the Peach Blossom Creek. And I remembered asking my sage grandfather why the geese fly like that. To which I remembered my grandfather teaching me that they do that for a very specific reason. I thought this Googled explanation explained it best (at least better than my ability to remember the exact words of my conversation with my grandfather):

"Canada geese fly in V formation for a very pragmatic reason: a flock of
geese flying in formation can move faster and maintain flight longer than any
one goose flying alone. Synergy is a law of nature."

Thus, the sum is greater than the whole of the parts. I like that. A lot. I want that for my wee ones. I want that for my friendships. I want that for my relationship with my DH and for my own little family.

This summer the kids got t-shirts indicating their Seamons "Team" number among the Seamons Grandkids. (We plan to do it for my side when we get a little larger). The point that we tried to make to these (currently) 17 team members and that we hope to make to our own kids when they are old enough, however, is that they are all part of a larger team where, if they all work together toward their common family goals, their sum will truly be greater than the whole of their own parts.

They will be in synergy.

Naturally.