When I went to college I helped my psychology professor with an unusual task: catching pigeons in an attic.

The pigeons were to be captured and trained to peck at tiny lighted disks in a Skinner box to uncover the secrets of reward and response.

Our job was to sneak into the darkened attic of the faculty hall, long after hours, and each person creep up to a pigeon unawares. And then, while we stared the creature in the face like we were eyeing a tiger, cut the lights. Pigeons don't move around in the dark, and all you had to do was grab the bird and put him in the sack.

Only it's not that easy to thrust your hand into the utter darkness and risk getting pecked and hit in a whirlwind of flapping feathers.

So I hovered my hand ever so slowly in the blackened room. I must be directly over his head, I thought. I can't clamp down, no, not now. In fear, I moved my hand in farther and farther. 

Then the scared bird suddenly took flight, and in a fury of flapping wings, grazed my head in revenge.

My prize was gone.

In a quick moment, in one of those insights that comes rarely in a person's life, the thought - or maybe a voice - came to me, "This is going to be a metaphor for your life, if you're not careful. Your prize will be right in front of you. Just grab it."

That's how it is so often in our lives, in our struggles for the prize. How often is the answer to a thorny problem right in front of us?

If we are in business, we deluge ourselves with tons of helpful material. Yes, it's all good stuff. But there comes a time to pull the trigger.

We've read enough. Thought enough. Sometimes we have to just sit back and let our thoughts flow idly by like a peaceful river.

And then the answer can pop up before us, on the wings of a fast-flying messenger.