Why? Why can't I...?
That's not the answer.
I just can't flap my wings fast enough.
Maybe seagulls can't fly faster than 62 miles per hour.
But wouldn't it be great if we could?
I wonder how high I could really fly,
what the world would look like from way up there.
My wings are heavy.
I don't feel steady.
I didn't fall all the way.
I can do it.
I've got to make it higher than anyone's ever flown before.
I can.
I can see everywhere.
How am I gonna tell them? How am I gonna say it?
Mother, Father...
...I hope you'll understand.
This time you have to.
I've found things that will change our lives.
There's such a world out there.
None of us have ever seen it or felt it.
I've just flown up today higher than we ever fly,
far above the highest clouds.
But you can see.
I mean, you can see everywhere.
For the first time in my life I see where we live.
Son, we looked everywhere for you the last few days.
The elders in the flock are talking about you.
They know you fly off on your own,
where we never fly.
They don't understand it. They will not allow it.
Not allow me to learn? Why?
Oh, I can understand your dreams, Jonathan.
We all dream of better things when we're young.
I'm afraid...
...for you.
I'm afraid of what you're doing.
Maybe this isn't the best life, but it's all we know.
Winter's coming.
The flock must stay together to survive.
We were meant to live the way we live, accept it.
Take your place.
Will you try, Son?
If you don't, we will have all lived for nothing.
We weren't meant to live this way.
I know you're wrong.
But... I'll try.
Maybe the secret is fixed wings.
Flap up to 50 and hold the wings still.
I'll bet that's it.
Fifty and still.
It won't hurt anybody if I try that. Will it?
It won't hurt anybody, take away anybody's freedom
if I just slip out and give it a try.
Nothing to worry about.
Just a very simple thing here.
I'm going to make a simple dive, to 50 miles per hour
and hold the wings steady and go straight on down.
Here we go.
This is it.
Thirty, 40, 50...
No. No! Pull out!
I... I can't do it.
I'll be killed.
What is this? I'm afraid.
I'm on the right way of doing this, and I'm afraid.
So, what are you going to do?
You going to glide around here for the rest of your life without trying?
If you're scared, go back to the flock where everyone else is scared too.
Sixty... 70.
Faster than any seagull has ever...
Pull!
There's got to be more to life than fighting
for some fish head somewhere.
There's no way around it.
If I was meant to learn so much about flying,
I'd have charts for brains.
If I were meant to fly fast, I'd have a falcon's short wings,
live on mice instead of fish.
I've got to live with what I am.
I promise this day that I will be a seagull...
...like every other seagull.
Does my life end here?
I can't believe that.
I wasn't born to drown in this ocean.
I can die here,
or I can force myself to fly.
It's in me.
It's in me!
I've got to try.
I've got to get back home.
At last I can stop thinking, for once in my life.
Just stop thinking
and fly towards the lights in the dark.
Dark?
Seagulls never fly in the dark.
Get down.
If you were meant to fly in the dark, you'd have the eyes of an owl.
You'd have charts for brains.
You'd have a falcon's short wings.
A falcon's short wings.
I dive on the wingtips only.
Why didn't I think?
Short wings. Short wings.
Faster than any seagull anywhere. Ever!
I'll teach the others. I'll show the flock how!
I did it!
It works.
Short wings all controlled. It works!
I must have hit 1 70 in the dive, and that was just a short dive.
What will I hit if I dive from 1 0,000 feet?
A quick roll in, fold the wings, just the tips out in the air,
take her straight down just like last night,
and we'll see just how fast a seagull can fly.
One-eighty! One-ninety!
Oh, God! The flock!
Look out!
The elders. The whole flock.
They believe me now.
They finally understand.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull...
...you have been called here
to be judged in the sight of your flock.
Jonathan Gull, for your reckless flying,
for refusing to join the flock to which you were born,
for turning your back upon the traditions of your flock,
assembled here.
I haven't turned my back.
I want to share what I've found with all of you.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you do not live as we live.
You do not fly as we fly.
You do not believe as we believe.
You will learn that life is the unknown
and the unknowable.
We are put into this world to survive any way we can,
as long as we can.
I don't believe that.
Jonathan Seagull, the brotherhood is broken.
Never again will you see any of your flock.
Never again will you have the protection of your flock.
You are henceforth and forever outcast!
Outcast.
- Jonathan. - Why, Jonathan? Why?
No. This is not your sky.
This is my sky! My sky!
Stay out! My sky!
I will fly where a seagull has never flown before.
I will see every land, every ocean.
I will know all there is to know of this life.
Who are you?
Hello, Jonathan.
We're from your new flock.
We're your brothers.
We've come to show you a higher place.
I don't have any flock.
I'm old, I'm tired.
I can't fly any higher.
But you can, Jonathan.
For you have learned.
One school is finished, and it is time for another to begin.
Oh...
...I see.
Am I an outcast here too?
Jonathan, we've come to take you home.
It's time to begin.
I don't know quite where I am.
Have I slept a long time?
Only for a short while.
I'm Maureen, your instructor here.
We're going to learn together.
Maureen.
Your name came into my mind even before you said it.
Welcome home.
Home? I've never been here before.
Maybe not. Feels like home though, doesn't it?
Everything feels different.
Where is everybody?
Why aren't there more of us here?
The only answer I can see, Jonathan,
is that you were pretty well a one-in-a-million bird.
Most of us came along ever so slowly.
We went from one world into another that was almost exactly like it,
forgetting right away where we'd come from,
not caring where we were headed,
living for the moment.
Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through
before we even got the first idea that there is more to life
than eating or fighting or power in the flock?
Many lives, Jon.
And then other lives to learn that there is such a thing as perfection.
And others again, to finally get the idea that our purpose for living
is to find that perfection
and show it forth.
But you, Jonathan, learned so much at one time
that you didn't have to go through 1 00 lives to reach this one.
My life back there, I don't remember very well.
Everything's blurred, I...
All those years.
Cast out? Alone?
Yes. But it was a fine life.
Didn't you say you know me from somewhere?
I believe there were many somewheres.
I know what it is to speak, to feel and never to be heard.
Can I really learn to fly without limits?
Maybe you'll find something that will mean even more to you
than flying without limits.
To learn what perfection really is.
Let's try some real flying now.
You're adjusting very well to your new body, and to the air here.
It's almost time for you to meet the elders here.
I don't want to see an elder as long as I...
Well...
Are you afraid to say ''live''?
Have you ever felt more alive? Happier?
No, that's... that's just the point. I...
I don't want any elder telling me what I can't do.
This is your new flock, Jonathan.
What was that?
Maureen?
Look up there.
Oh, I was afraid he'd gone away.
Jonathan, that's Chiang.
Not bad, for a feeble old elder.
Maureen, I never saw anyone fly like that.
Good evening, Maureen.
Jonathan.
Good evening, Chiang.
Hello, sir.
It's an honour to meet you.
The honour is mine, Jonathan Seagull.
Maureen.
He learns well?
A little impatient is all.
He knows everything I know.
And more now.
Maureen, how can you say that? I have so much to learn.
You know so much more than I.
Jonathan, you know it now.
You still need to practise smoothness and patience,
but you know the flying very well.
I still have questions.
Ask whatever you want.
I... Well...
Chiang, this world isn't heaven at all, is it?
Where we are now.
It isn't heaven at all.
Who said it was?
Heaven isn't a place.
Heaven's perfection. Wouldn't you think?
And we don't go there, as much as we express it.
Does that sound true to you?
Yes.
I suppose.
You're a very fast flyer.
Well, I... I enjoy travelling quickly,
but I don't like limits.
I want to fly faster than I can now and higher and learn more.
I can fly 276 miles per hour now.
Level. That's pretty fast, but it's not fast enough.
Don't ask me why, but it just isn't fast enough.
What is fast enough, Jonathan?
You who are impatient to be perfect.
What is perfect speed?
Well...
...perfect speed.
A thousand miles per hour?
That's a limit.
A million miles an hour?
That's a limit.
Speed of light?
That's a limit too.
They're all limits.
Perfect speed, my son, isn't moving fast at all.
Perfect speed is being there.
So...
Maureen, did you see that?
He says we can all learn that,
whenever we want to learn it.
The next life maybe.
It is not so difficult, Jonathan,
once we understand.
I want to understand, now.
What does it feel like?
How far can you go?
To any place, to any time
that you wish to go.
I've gone everywhere and every-when I can think of.
After a while, one begins to think
that space and time are not quite real.
Can you teach me to fly like that?
Of course. If you want to learn.
Yes, I want. When can we start? I'll do anything.
Maureen, did you see...? I've got to learn.
How do you do it? I mean, how...?
First, you let your teacher get a word in edgewise.
I'm sorry, Chiang.
It's just that all my life...
I can't explain it. ...I've had this...
This need to know.
To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is now,
or ever has been or ever will be,
you begin by knowing that you've already arrived.
I beg your pardon?
I am already there, on that highest peak.
I am not limited by any body.
I am not limited by space.
I am not limited by time.
I am a perfect expression of freedom, here and now.
All right, here I go.
I am going right... now!
Now!
Now?
Jonathan?
Can I bring you anything?
No.
Nothing.
I have to do this.
I don't care how long I have to stand here, I will do it.
Would you like to take a break?
Good evening, sir, I...
I'm concentrating as hard as I can.
I just can't get it.
Jon, you don't need faith.
You don't need faith to fly.
You need to understand flying, don't you?
To learn certain facts about things you cannot see.
This is just the same.
I am a perfect expression of freedom and flight.
Why am I thinking that way?
This isn't some ritual.
Real is real.
I really am a perfect idea.
It works. It really works.
Well, of course it works, Jonathan.
It always works when you know what you're doing.
Now, about your control...
Well, it's different anyway.
We're trapped in here.
There's no way out of here.
Jonathan, there's a way out.
Oh... yes.
But why did I come here at all?
Like attracts like.
Wherever your thought is, that is where your body is going to be,
sooner or later.
You're just learning to do it sooner.
Did you want to be walled away, to think this over?
Here you are.
Try it again.
And hold your thought on something you've always loved.
I know things I love, but I'm not sure.
Do it. I'm with you.
I have always liked stars.
It is a fine view.
And a good place to be alone.
But so much of love is giving, don't you think?
Sharing the very best you know with someone who's trying to learn.
Try it again, and this time, think giving.
No special names or place.
Just think love and see where you turn up.
Ready?
Any time.
What's this?
What's happening?
My old flock. I don't love them.
Don't you, Jonathan?
Well, I always did want to give them what I'd learned about flying,
if that's what you mean by love,
but I never found the way.
When the time is right for you to give to them,
nothing can keep it from happening.
When it's wrong, nothing can make it be.
I can't see how that can ever happen.
Don't worry about it.
Try it, once more now.
Think love and being in the place that's right for you to be now.
Hello, Maureen.
Hello, Jonathan.
The time's come for me to leave you.
There are others I must help.
And there is more for me to learn.
You can't leave now. l've only begun.
Jonathan Seagull, someday you will know
how long ago your flight began
and how great a journey you have travelled.
Now you are ready to begin the most difficult
and the most powerful journey of all.
You are ready to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and love.
Jonathan, you were born to be a teacher,
to give the truth to anyone struggling to break out of his limits.
It is important to give what you have found, as a gift,
to whomever will accept it.
Chiang, I know I'll see you again.
Of course you will, and, Jonathan,
keep working on love.
What's the matter?
How much more I would've known, if someone like Chiang
had come along the day I was an outcast.
What a different life I would have had.
What a different life the flock back there would've had.
Maureen, I have to go back.
We're always parting.
We're always saying goodbye.
I know you don't want me to go.
I know my old flock doesn't care what flying is.
They don't care about learning.
They don't care about looking beyond what they see with their eyes,
but, Maureen, there's got to be somebody in that time who cares.
Jonathan, go with my love.
Maureen, goodbye for now.
I love who you are, Jonathan.
Fletcher Lynd Seagull,
you were born to us, but you are not part of us.
You cry against the flock
and against the law.
You ask questions, answered 1 ,000 years ago.
You do not wish the protection of the flock.
And you shall not have it.
You are henceforth and forever...
...outcast!
I don't want your protection.
You're gonna wish you never...
All your ''henceforth and forever.''
It's not gonna be me who needs protection.
It's not gonna be me!
I don't care what they say.
There's one hell of a lot more to flying
than just flapping around from A to B.
A mosquito can do that.
One little barrel roll around the elder to show him what's possible,
and I'm outcast.
Can't they see?
Can't they... they think of the glory it'll be
when we really find out how to fly?
Damn the flock.
I'll be outlaw all right.
Outlaw like they never saw before.
I'll make them so sorry.
Don't hurt them, Fletcher Seagull.
Who are you?
In casting you out, the other gulls have only hurt themselves,
and one day they will know this, and one day they will see what you see.
Forgive them and help them understand.
I don't understand.
Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to learn to fly?
Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the flock? And learn?
And go back to them one day and help them know?
I do!
Then, Fletcher, let's begin with level flight.
We're all outcasts.
We're all friends.
We're learning to fly just for the fun of it.
Take your time.
Your whole body from wingtip to wingtip
is nothing more than your thought itself,
in a form you can see.
Break the chains of your thought,
and you break the chains of your body too.
That's fine, Fletcher. Judy Lee.
Fly it nice and loose until you get used to formation flying.
We'll just go on practicing,
and you can slide in closer whenever you feel like it.
Fletcher, it's time to go.
Time to go where, Jonathan?
Back to the flock.
We have a gift to give.
But we're not ready.
We're not welcome. Jonathan, we're outcast.
We can't force ourselves where we're not welcome, can we?
And it's the law of the flock!
We're free to go where we wish and to be what we are.
Why should we bother with the flock?
Seagulls are the laziest, dirtiest, most vicious...
Suspicious, clumsiest. A seagull hardly knows how to walk.
But don't you see, Fletcher? A seagull wasn't made to walk.
He was made to fly, and when he learns to fly,
he's the purest, loveliest, most graceful creature alive.
True for you, true for me, true for all the flock.
We can soar free across the sky, but how often we don't want to.
That's the gift we can give,
to help those who want to learn find what they love to do.
It is the law of the flock that an outcast never returns.
Anyone who follows them, anyone who listens to them,
anyone who turns his back on the flock will be outcast too!
I only wish to share what I've learned.
The very simple fact that it is right for a gull to fly
because freedom is the very nature of his being.
Whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside.
We don't need ritual and superstitions to live.
The law of the flock decides!
Do you speak of law? Is it the law which decrees
we must fight among ourselves just to feed on garbage?
It can't be!
The only true law is that which sets us free.
There can be no other.
How can you expect us to fly as you fly?
You are special and gifted and divine,
above other birds.
Look at Fletcher, Charles-Roland, Judy Lee.
Are they also special and gifted and divine?
No more than you are.
No more than I am.
The only difference, the very only one,
is that they have begun to understand what they really are
and have begun to practise it.
What if we could fly like that?
They're outcasts. Ignore them.
Don't listen to him. Ignore him!
Ignore them.
Ignore them all. They're outcasts.
Anyone who looks upon an outcast breaks the law of the flock!
Ignore them.
Ignore him!
Each of us finds and follows what we most love to do,
no matter what others think.
And this brings us automatically to discover more of who we really are.
There's a law there, a principle like aerodynamics,
that simply does not fail.
You can count on it.
- Help me. - Hello, Kirk Maynard.
I want to fly more than anything in the world. Please.
We can start learning right now.
You don't understand.
My wing.
I can't move my wing.
You have the freedom to be yourself,
your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.
Are you saying I can fly?
Kirk Maynard can't fly. He was born crippled.
- He's never been off the ground. - You're free, Kirk Maynard.
Fly.
I can fly.
I can fly!
Listen, I can fly.
I can fly!
This Fletcher says he'll come right down here
in front of us at 200 miles an hour.
Just to prove it.
If he can learn it, I can learn it.
- I'll believe it when he shows us how. - I'm sorry, I just don't believe it.
A normal seagull like you and me is not meant to fly at 200 miles an hour.
Somewhere up there Fletcher's flying.
I've known him since he was your age.
I'm afraid, Mother. I want to go with you.
Stay here. I want you safe.
Here we go. They won't believe it till they see it with their eyes,
till we prove it especially for them.
Listen, we should be able to hear him.
Quiet, I think I hear him.
I'm ready.
- Here he comes! - Do you believe now?
- I can't. - Mother. Mother! Where are you?
Look at that baby bird! He's in Fletcher's way! He'll get killed!
I had to.
I would have hit him.
- But why? - The trick, Fletcher,
is that we're trying to overcome our limitations in order, patiently.
We don't go flying through rock until a little later in the programme.
Jonathan!
Also known as the Son of the Great Gull?
What are you doing here? The...
The cliff.
There was a... a baby gull gliding down.
Haven't I...?
Didn't I... die?
Oh, Fletcher, come on, think.
If you're talking to me now, then obviously you didn't die, did you?
You merely changed your level of thinking... rather abruptly.
It's your choice now. You can stay here and learn on this level,
which is quite a bit higher than the one you left, by the way,
or you can go back and keep working in the flock.
The elders were hoping for some kind of disaster,
but they're startled that you would oblige them so well.
I want to go back to the flock.
Of course! There's a new group...
I haven't even begun.
You're sure you wouldn't rather stay?
Let's get going.
All right, Fletcher. Remember what we were saying
about our body being nothing more than thought itself?
Fletcher.
Fletcher?
It's true.
Jon, I'm beginning to see.
- He's alive! - He touched him with a feather.
- Brought him to life! - He is the Son of the Great Gull.
It's a trick! Don't listen to him!
He's a devil!
He's the devil!
He is the devil. He is the devil!
I tell you he is the devil!
He can destroy us all!
He can destroy the flock!
Kill him!
Would you feel better if we left?
They wanted to kill us!
How did we get away?
Like everything else, Fletcher, practice.
I don't understand.
The flock was gonna kill us. Our own flock!
Why? Remember what you said about loving the flock enough
to return to them and help them live? They wanted us dead.
They're a mob. They're killers.
How can you love them?
You don't love hatred and evil, of course.
You have to practise and see the good in every one of them
and help them see it in themselves. That's what we mean by love.
It's fun... when you get the idea of it.
I remember a fierce young bird, for instance.
Fletcher Lynd Seagull, his name.
Just been made outcast, ready to fight the flock to the death,
getting a start on building his own bitter hell out on the far cliffs.
And here he is today, building his own heaven instead
and leading the whole flock in that direction.
Me? Leading?
You're the instructor here.
You can't leave us.
Don't you think there might be other flocks, other Fletchers
that need an instructor now more than this one?
But me, Jon? I'm just a plain seagull, and you're...
Oh, yes, yes, yes, I know.
The only Son of the Great Gull, I suppose.
Fletcher, you don't need me anymore.
All the younger ones in the flock and some of the others too
are ready to follow you now.
All you need is to keep finding the real, unlimited Fletcher Seagull.
He's your instructor.
And don't let them spread silly rumours about me
or try to make me some sort of a god, will you, Fletcher?
I'm a seagull. I like to fly, maybe.
Jonathan.
We both have learned what we were meant to learn in our time together, Fletcher.
That the way to find perfection and love is within us.
Look with your understanding.
Find out what you already know.
Use it, Fletcher.
Teach it, show it forth.
And you'll know the way to fly.