The bird with only one wing

From The Worm Forgives the Plough by John Stewart Collis.

Per the blurb:

John Stewart Collis was a writer, poet, scientist and scholar. At the outbreak of World War II he refused military service and went to work on the land for the next six years - the experience described in this book. He died in 1984.

On page 165, he describes his late lunch after a long morning of laboring in the fields.

Here I now ate my much postponed meal. I enjoyed it so much that when finished, and with cigarette in hand, I felt a great sense of physical well-being. It is not very often that one gets this feeling after agricultural work, but if the weather has been hot and the work hard-going as opposed to a slow drag, it is possible to feel really well afterwards. When this happens the mind sometimes attains a considerable liberty and can move without hindrance. And, in my own case, as I had been doing what is called 'an honest day's work', my mind enjoyed still greater freedom. I could regard phenomena, natural or social, without guilt, without anxiety, without ideas concieved by others, without for a moment having to attain to the condition of that strangest of all birds, the bird with only one wing, Left or Right, the bird that cannot soar upwards, and take a bird's-eye view.

That is a great last line. I aspire towards a happy median of engaged action motivated by passion juxtaposed with a calm equanimity. "Everything in moderation including moderation." The tendency to become captured by a singular world view, of Left or Right or of some other dichotomy is a common fate but I had never thought of it in that striking visual metaphor, a one winged bird that cannot fly.