The eagle is the longest-living of birds; some reach seventy years. But to attain that age, at around forty it must make a very serious and difficult decision.

As the eagle nears forty, its talons stiffen and lose their flexibility, so it can no longer grip and hold the prey it lives on. Its beak grows long and curls toward its chest. Its wings turn old and heavy, its feathers coarse and thick. Flying becomes very hard.

So the eagle must choose between two things: either it chooses death, or it endures the painful, arduous process of rebirth — a process that lasts about a hundred and fifty days.

If it chooses rebirth, the eagle flies to a mountaintop and stays in its nest on a rock wall, where it no longer needs to fly. There it begins to strike its beak hard against the rock until, at last, the beak breaks off and falls. It waits for a new beak to grow, and with this new beak it tears out its old talons. When new talons have grown, it plucks out its old, coarse feathers. Five months later, the eagle is ready for its famous flight of rebirth — a flight that grants it twenty more years of life, or even more.

In our own lives, too, we often must pass through a season of rebirth. To keep our flight of victory, we have to free ourselves from the old habits, customs, and memories that weigh us down. Only when we let go of the unnecessary baggage of the past can we draw the full, extraordinary benefit that renewal brings to all our experience.

Move toward your goal — to forget what lies behind, and to reach what waits ahead.