Deep Sleep Bedtime Story: Jonathan Livingston Seagull
by Ben Douch
Ease yourself into sleep, with this reading of part one of the classic novella: Jonathan Livingston Seagull a story, by Richard Bach. It's an inspiring allegory of self-discovery and transcendence. Encouraging us to embody our independence and embrace our individuality. To follow our dreams, and our passions, and plot our own path towards that which gives us meaning. To help you relax into the story, and drift off to sleep, we'll start with an embodied experience of relaxing on a beautiful beach.
Transcript
Hello,
It's Ben here with a story to help you relax into a deep sleep.
I'll be reading part one of the classic novella The Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Back.
It's a tale of a bird who refuses to be limited by the idea of who he is supposed to be or the expectations of fitting in with his flock.
It's an inspiring allegory of self-discovery and transcendence,
Encouraging us to embody our independence and embrace our individuality,
To follow our dreams,
Our passions and plot our own path towards that which gives us meaning.
Before we begin our seaside story,
Let's see if we can get a bit more relaxed with the help of our imagination.
Start to bring to mind the image of a beautiful beach with soft white pinkish sand,
The kind that squeaks beneath your feet and which gently descends towards the ocean,
Where the sun sparkles and dances on the glassy surface,
The water a miraculous shade of turquoise blue to emerald green.
Maybe you've just been for a swim,
Your body loosened from the exertion,
Supple and relaxed.
Perhaps you've just done a bit of reading yourself,
Taking in the relaxing view and now ready for a nap.
A soft cozy towel lies beneath you,
Eyes closed you feel the warmth of the sun on your skin,
Your cheeks,
Your ears,
Your arms,
Your legs,
Warm yet still refreshed from the droplets of water that cling to your body.
The tender touch of a slight breeze carries the salty flora of the ocean and a faint distant murmur of others enjoying the beach too.
The tide caresses its way over the pebbles,
Easing its way in and out.
From high above,
A bird cry here and there,
Sounds fluttering by as the world around you begins to soften,
Dissolving away for the day,
Feeling held and cocooned by the comforting sensations,
A drowsy contentment,
A persuasive ushering towards rest and sleep.
Nothing to do right now but enjoy the story of Jonathan Seagull.
It was morning and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
A mile from shore,
A fishing boat chummed the water and the word for breakfast flock flashed through the air,
Till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food.
It was another busy day beginning.
But way off alone,
Out by himself beyond boat and shore,
Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing.
A hundred feet in the sky,
He lowered his webbed feet,
Lifted his beak and strained to hold a painful,
Hard twisting curve through his wings.
The curve meant that he would fly slowly,
And now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face,
Until the ocean stood still beneath him.
He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration,
Held his breath,
Forced one single more inch of curve.
Then his feathers ruffled,
He stalled and fell.
Seagulls,
As you know,
Never falter,
Never stall.
To stall in the air is for them disgrace and is dishonor.
But Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
Unashamed,
Stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve,
Slowing,
Slowing and stalling once more,
Was no ordinary bird.
Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight.
How to get from shore to food and back again.
For most gulls,
It's not flying that matters,
But eating.
For this gull,
Though,
It was not eating that mattered,
But flight.
More than anything else,
Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
It's kind of thinking,
He found,
It's not the way to make oneself popular with other birds.
Even his parents were dismayed,
As Jonathan spent whole days alone,
Making hundreds of low-level glides,
Experimenting.
He didn't know why,
For instance,
But when he flew at altitudes less than half his wingspan above the water,
He could stay in the air longer,
With less effort.
His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash into the sea,
But with a long,
Flat wake as he touched the surface with his feet tightly streamlined against his body.
When he began sliding into feet-up landings on the beach,
And pacing the length of his slide in the sand,
His parents were very much dismayed indeed.
Why,
John,
Why?
His mother asked.
Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock,
John?
Why can't you leave low-flying to the pelicans,
The albatross?
Why don't you eat,
Son?
You're bone and feathers.
I don't mind being bone and feathers,
Mum.
I just want to know what I can do in the air,
And what I can't,
That's all.
I just want to know.
See here,
Jonathan,
Said his father,
Not unkindly.
Winter isn't far away.
Boats will be few,
And the surface fish will be swimming deep.
If you must study,
Then study food,
And how to get it.
This flying business is all very well,
But you can't eat a glide,
You know.
Don't you forget that the reason you fly is to eat.
Jonathan nodded obediently.
For the next few days he tried to behave like the other gulls.
He really tried.
Screeching and fighting with the flock around the piers and fishing boats.
Diving on scraps of fish and bread.
But he couldn't make it work.
It's all so pointless,
He thought.
Deliberately dropping a hard-won anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him.
I could be spending all this time learning to fly.
There's so much to learn.
It wasn't long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again.
Far out at sea,
Hungry,
Happy,
Learning.
The subject was speed,
And in a week's practice he learned more about speed than the fastest gull alive.
From a thousand feet,
Flapping his wings as hard as he could,
He pushed over into a blazing steep dive towards the waves,
And learned why seagulls don't make blazing steep power dives.
In just six seconds,
He was moving 70 miles per hour.
The speed at which one's wing goes unstable on the upstroke,
Time after time it happens.
Careful as he was,
Working at the very peak of his ability,
He lost control at high speed.
Climb to a thousand feet,
Full power straight ahead first,
Then push over,
Flapping,
To a vertical dive.
Then,
Every time,
His left wing stalled on an upstroke.
He'd roll violently left,
Stall his right wing recovering,
And flick like fire into a wild tumbling spin to the right.
He couldn't be careful enough on that upstroke.
Ten times he tried,
And all ten times,
As he passed through 70 miles per hour,
He burst into a churning mass of feathers,
Out of control,
Crashing down into the water.
The key,
He thought at last,
Dripping wet,
Must be to hold the wings still at high speeds.
To flap up to 50,
And then hold the wings still.
From 2,
000 feet,
He tried again,
Rolling into a dive.
Beak straight down,
Wings full out and stable from the moment he passed 50 miles per hour.
It took tremendous strength,
But it worked.
In ten seconds,
He had blurred through 90 miles per hour.
Jonathan had set a world speed record for seagulls,
But victory was short-lived.
The instant he began his pullout,
The instant he changed the angle of his wings,
He snapped into that same terrible,
Uncontrolled disaster.
And at 90 miles per hour,
It hit him like dynamite.
Jonathan's seagull exploded in midair,
And smashed down into a brick hard sea.
When he came to,
It was well after dark,
And he floated in moonlight on the surface of the ocean.
His wings were ragged bars of lead,
But the weight of failure was even heavier on his back.
He wished,
Feebly,
That the weight could be just enough to drag him gently down to the bottom,
And end it all.
As he sank low in the water,
A strange,
Hollow voice sounded within him.
There's no way around it.
I am a seagull.
I am limited by my nature.
If I were meant to learn so much about flying,
I'd have charts for brains.
If I were meant to fly at speed,
I'd have a falcon's short wings,
And live on mice instead of fish.
My father was right.
I must forget this foolishness.
I must fly home to the flock,
And be content as I am,
As a poor,
Limited seagull.
The voice faded,
And Jonathan agreed.
The place for a seagull at night is unsure,
And from this moment forth,
He vowed he would be a normal gull.
He would make everyone happier.
He pushed wearily away from the dark water,
And flew toward the land,
Grateful for what he had learned about work-saving,
Low-altitude flying.
But no,
He thought.
I am done with the way I was.
I am done with everything I learned.
I am a seagull,
Like every other seagull,
And I will fly like one.
So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet,
And flapped his wings harder,
Pressing for shore.
He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the flock.
There would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn.
There would be no more challenge,
And no more failure.
And it was pretty just to stop thinking,
And fly through the dark,
Towards the lights above the beach.
Dark.
The hollow voice cracked in alarm.
Seagulls never fly in the dark.
Jonathan was not alert to listen.
It's pretty,
He thought.
The moon and the lights twinkling on the water,
Throwing out little beacon trails through the night,
And all so peaceful and still.
Get down.
Seagulls never fly in the dark.
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.
There in the night,
A hundred feet in the air,
Jonathan Livingston Seagull blinked.
His pain,
His resolutions vanished.
Short wings.
A falcon's short wings.
That's the answer.
What a fool I've been.
All I need is a tiny little wing.
All I need is to fold most of my wings,
And fly on just the tips alone.
Short wings.
He climbed 2,
000 feet above the Black Sea,
And without a moment for thought of failure and death,
He brought his four wings tightly into his body,
Left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips extended into the wind,
And fell into a vertical dive.
The wind was a monster roar at his head.
70 miles per hour,
90,
120,
And faster still.
The wing strain now at 140 miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been before at 70,
And with a faintest twist of his wingtips,
He eased out of the dive and shot above the waves,
A grey cannonball under the moon.
He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced.
A hundred forty miles per hour,
And under control.
If I dive from 5,
000 feet instead of 2,
000,
I wonder how fast.
His vows of a moment before were forgotten,
Swept away in that great swift wind,
Yet he felt guiltless,
Breaking the promises he had made himself.
Such promises are only for the goals that accept the ordinary.
One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise.
By sunup,
Jonathan Goale was practicing again.
From 5,
000 feet,
The fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water.
Breakfast flock was a faint cloud of dust motes circling.
He was alive,
Trembling ever so slightly with delight,
Proud that his fear was under control.
Then,
Without ceremony,
He hugged in his forewings,
Extended his short,
Angled wingtips,
And plunged directly toward the sea.
By the time he passed 4,
000 feet,
He had reached terminal velocity.
The wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move no faster.
He was flying now straight down at 214 miles per hour.
He swallowed,
Knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed,
He'd be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull.
But the speed was power,
And the speed was joy,
And the speed was pure beauty.
He began his pullout at 1,
000 feet,
Wingtips thudding and blurring in that gigantic wind.
The boat and the crowd of Goales tilting and growing meteor-fast directly in his path.
He couldn't stop.
He didn't know yet even how to turn at that speed.
Collision would be instant death,
And so he shut his eyes.
It happened that morning,
Then,
Just after sunrise,
That Jonathan Livingston Seagull flied directly through the center of breakfast flock.
Ticking off 212 miles per hour,
Eyes closed,
In a great roaring shriek of wind and feathers,
The goal of fortune smiled upon him this once,
And no one was killed.
By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky,
He was scorching along at a hundred and sixty miles per hour.
When he had slowed to twenty and stretched his wings again at last,
The boat was a crumb on the sea,
4,
000 feet below.
His thought was triumph,
Terminal velocity,
A seagull at 214 miles per hour.
It was a breakthrough,
The greatest single moment in the history of the flock,
And in that moment,
A new age opened for Jonathan Goal.
Flying out to his lonely practice area,
Folding his wings for a dive from 8,
000 feet,
He set himself at once to discover how to turn.
A single wingtip feather,
He found,
Moved a fraction of an inch,
Gives a smooth sweeping curve at tremendous speed.
Before he learned this,
However,
He found that moving more than one feather at that speed will spin you like a rifle ball,
And Jonathan had flown the first aerobatics of any seagull on earth.
He spared no time that day for talk with other Goals,
But flew on past sunset.
He discovered the loop,
The slow roll,
The point roll,
The inverted spin,
The goal blunt,
The pinwheel.
When Jonathan Seagull joined the flock on the beach,
It was full night.
He was dizzy and terribly tired,
Yet in delight,
He flew a loop to landing with a snap roll just before touchdown.
When they hear of it,
He thought,
Of the breakthrough,
They'll be wild with joy.
How much more there is now to living.
Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats,
There's a reason to live,
There's a reason to life.
We can lift ourselves out of ignorance,
We can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill,
We can be free,
We can learn to fly.
The years ahead hummed and glowed with promise.
The Goals were flocked into the council gathering when he landed,
And apparently had been so flocked for some time,
They were,
In fact,
Waiting.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
Stand to the centre.
The elders' words sounded in a voice of highest ceremony.
Stand to the centre in only great shame or great honour.
Stand to the centre for honour was the way the Goals' foremost leaders were marked.
Of course,
He thought,
The breakfast flock this morning,
They saw the breakthrough,
But I want no honours,
I have no wish to be leader.
I want only to share what I found,
To show those horizons out ahead for us all.
He stepped forward.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
Said the elder,
Stand to the centre for shame in the sight of your fellow Goals.
It felt like being hit with a board,
His knees went weak,
His feathers sagged,
It was roaring in his ears.
Centred for shame?
Impossible,
The breakthrough,
They can't understand,
They're wrong,
They are wrong.
For his reckless irresponsibility,
The solemn voice intoned,
For violating the dignity and tradition of the Goal family.
To be centred for shame meant that he would be cast out of Goal society,
Banished to a solitary life on the far cliffs.
One day,
Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
You shall learn that irresponsibility does not pay.
Life is the unknown and the unknowable,
Except that we are put into this world to eat,
To stay alive as long as we possibly can.
A seagull never speaks back to the council flock,
But it was Jonathan's voice raised.
Irresponsibility,
My brothers,
He cried.
Who is more responsible than a Goal who finds and follows a meaning,
A higher purpose for life?
For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads,
But now we have a reason to live,
To learn,
To discover,
To be free.
Give me one chance,
Let me show you what I found.
The flock might as well have been stoned.
The brotherhood is broken,
The Goals intoned together,
And with one accord they solemnly closed their ears and turned their backs upon him.
Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone,
But he flew way out beyond the far cliffs.
His one sorrow was not solitude,
It was that other Goals refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them.
They refused to open their eyes and see.
He learned more each day,
He learned that a streamlined high-speed drive could bring him to find the rare and tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean.
He no longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival.
He learned to sleep in the air,
Setting a course at night across the offshore wind,
Covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise.
With the same inner control,
He flew through heavy sea fogs and climbed above them into dazzling clear skies,
In the very times when every other Goal stood on the ground,
Knowing nothing but mist and rain.
He learned to ride the high winds for inland,
To dine there on delicate insects.
What he had once hoped for the flock,
He now gained for himself alone.
He learned to fly,
And was not sorry for the price that he had paid.
Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a Goal's life is so short,
And with these gone from his thought,
He lived a long,
Fine life indeed.
They came in the evening then,
And found Jonathan gliding peaceful and alone through his beloved sky.
The two Goals that appeared at his wings were pure as starlight,
And the glow from them was gentle and friendly in the high night air.
But most lovely of all was the skill with which they flew,
Their wingtips moving a precise and constant inch from his own.
Without a word,
Jonathan put them to his test,
A test that no Goal had ever passed.
He twisted his wings,
Slowed to a single mile per hour above stall.
The two radiant birds slowed with him,
Smoothly,
Locked in position,
They knew about slow flying.
He folded his wings,
Rolled,
And dropped in a dive to 190 miles per hour.
They dropped with him,
Streaking down in flawless formation.
At last he turned that speed straight up into a long,
Vertical,
Slow roll.
They rolled with him,
Smiling.
He recovered to level flight,
And was quiet for a time before he spoke.
Very well,
He said.
Who are you?
We're from your flock,
Jonathan.
We are your brothers.
The words were strong and calm.
We've come to take you higher,
To take you home.
Home I have none,
Flock I have none,
I am outcast.
And we fly now at the peak of the great mountain wind.
Beyond a few hundred feet,
I can lift this old body no higher.
But you can,
Jonathan,
For you have learned.
One school is finished,
And the time has come for another to begin.
As it had shined across him all his life,
So understanding lighted that moment for Jonathan Seagull.
They were right.
He could fly higher,
And it was time to go home.
He gave one last long look across the sky,
Across that magnificent silver land where he had learned so much.
I'm ready,
He said at last.
And Jonathan Seagull rose with the two star bright goals to disappear into a perfect dark sky.
4.8 (109)
Recent Reviews
Lisa
February 20, 2026
Beautiful reading of a fave book from youth . I only heard a bit and feel asleep . I’ll have to listen/read again! Ty !
Vanessa
August 18, 2025
Camping in the New Forest with wild ponies stomping around foraging and waking my dog hence me too (and maybe others?)! But falling back to sleep with extraordinary dreams. Thanks 🙏🏼 ❤️
Kate
February 22, 2025
I haven’t read this in decades. It’s very sweet. It was so meaningful to me when I was young. An introduction to inner life. Thank you for a lovely memory.
Rachel
May 4, 2024
A lovely rendition of a favourite of mine. Thank you Ben.