The Life and Death of Flaco the Owl and the Philosophy of Mid Life

“A ship in a harbour is safe but that's not what ships are built for." John Shedd

Feb 28, 2024

Flaco the owl is dead.

For those of you who don’t understand the significance of this news, Flaco was a Eurasian eagle owl who escaped from the Bronx Zoo in New York City when a vandal cut the mesh of his enclosure. He escaped on Feb 2, 2023 and lived as a free bird in the skies above the city until he died just over a year later when he struck a building on Friday, Feb 23 in the Upper West Side.

He was almost 14. In the wild they have an average life expectancy of 20 years and in captivity can live to 40. It was reading this statistic in the New York Times article that informed me of his death that inspired this post.

When I had to choose a primary category for my Substack, at first, I wasn’t sure where to put it. Perhaps it’s good that they don’t have a unique category for self-deprecating navel gazing.

I settled on Philosophy because if I am honest what marks this midlife crisis for me is the challenge of asking myself some tough questions. Questions that don’t have easy answers if any at all.

Flaco’s death brought to the fore my own exploration of what constitutes a good life. Would it have been better for him to have lived to the ripe old age of 40 in a cage or did he have a marvelous year of freedom that made his untimely death worth the brevity? Was he terrified by his freedom and longed for the safety and ease of his enclosure, or did he come alive to the sights and sounds of the wide-open sky and the thrill of having to hunt for his own food?

We obviously can’t know.

Flaco is of course an interesting foil for us. As we contemplate the question of “was his year of freedom preferable to a long life in an enclosure” we are effectively asking ourselves the same question.

It will probably not surprise you that I land on the “year of freedom” side of the debate.

I have had many “Flaco moments”. I once turned down an offer to convert my part time work as a computer technician for the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C. into a permanent position. It was a steady job – with a neat, well laid out path of GS level raises and career progressions – and it felt like death. I looked around at the old men (because it was all old men at the time) and thought, “Oh my god if I take this job I’m going to slowly die here.”

Of course, in retrospect the men were probably in their early 40’s and there is nothing that said I had to make a lifelong career of government work. Yet, choices have consequences. It is easy to get comfortable in our “enclosures”. Career switching gets harder and harder the longer we stay. We get accustomed to a certain pay level and trapped by our mortgages and social standings. How many of us even if a vandal opened our cage would make the courageous choice to fly away?

How many of us even if a vandal opened our cage would make the courageous choice to fly away?

I, not surprisingly, took flight. Yet it would be wrong to tell the story with the hindsight of it having worked out. As the plane began its final descent into Hong Kong, the gravity of what I had done sank into the pit of my stomach. I was 22, had a backpack and a briefcase as my sole possessions and was about to land in a city of seven million strangers. I had dog eared my Lonely Planet book with cheap accommodation options but still hadn’t decided which one to sleep in after my long flight. Perhaps if I just hid in the bathroom no one would notice me and I could just fly back home to Philadelphia. I was scared and I realized perhaps a little too late that I didn’t have a very solid plan for how to eek out a living let alone find a job in a busy, crowded and very expensive city.

That’s the problem with life: we tell our stories backwards but we have to live them forward. I could have just as easily died in one of the rat-infested fire traps I crashed in. It happens. For a year, Flaco was hailed as an underdog hero and a symbol of freedom… and now he’s dead. Would those same champions defend his right to freedom if they knew in less than a year he would be dead? How easily a “hero’s journey” can turn into a “cautionary tale”?

That’s the problem. As I shared in a previous post I promise you, I didn’t sit down one day and say, “I know. Wouldn’t it be cool to make a series of life decisions such that I wake up in my early 50’s single, unemployed and a stranger in a strange land?” Of course, my father would say, “That’s what happens when you make bad choices.” In other words, what do I expect when I’ve constantly eschewed the normal career and life trajectory choices that would in theory lead to stability and success? He’s definitely on the “Flaco should be alive and well in the zoo camp.”

I’m not sure he’s right though. Did I really make bad choices? Is it always fair to judge the merit of the choice by the outcome?

Is it always fair to judge the merit of the choice by the outcome?

I could have worked for the government all these years and still could have ended up single and unemployed - and yet, I wouldn’t have lived in Hong Kong . I wouldn’t have eaten seafood caught off a junk in the South China Sea. I never would have hiked the dragon’s back or watched the sun rise from the Peak.

I was raised to think it's my job to make good decisions.

I was raised to think success was the result of having made the right choices.

Land the right job; invest in the right ETF; pick the right partner; don’t go running off to foreign countries without a job.

I can’t imagine I’m alone in these subconscious beliefs.

However, underneath those assumptions about our choices is an unspoken risk and fear avoidance strategy.

In other words, instead of asking - "Is this the job that's going to stretch and push me and allow me the most growth even if I get fired?" We're really subconsciously seeking a steady paycheck and a solid retirement.

Instead of asking, "Does this person make my heart skip a beat when they walk in the room?" We're trying to assess if they will be honest and faithful.

The reality is we often don't know.

We make choices based on hoped for outcomes instead of what the experience itself will afford us regardless of the end result.

Isn't the real work the inside job to know that even if you get fired, declare bankruptcy, get dumped you'll be ok?

Philosophy is a tough category because there are no answers – only questions.

I am trying to live those questions myself.

At the heart of my midlife inquiry is a search for meaning. It’s a deep questioning of what makes a “good enough life”. How does one balance the need for freedom and stability? Can you have connection and community without deep roots somewhere? Will my future self, the old lady in the mirror, be happy with the choices I made, or will she have regrets?

I am sad that Flaco is dead. The residents of New York City are perhaps the saddest. How many of them would get a glimpse of him flying above the traffic and for a brief moment wonder what their lives might be like if they too got out of their mesh enclosures?

We will never know what the last year of Flaco’s life was like. Was he happy (if owls can feel such emotions) or did he regret his decision to leave the enclosure?

We can never know, but I do know this: the wingspan of Eurasian eagle owls is two meters.

Two meters!

Clearly, these birds were clearly built to fly.