The Red Tail Feather of the Benin Parrot

The Meaning Behind the Painting In the traditions of Benin, there are stories passed down about the origin of the Grey Parrot’s distinctive red tail feathers. One such story tells that the Grey Parrot once borrowed red feathers from another bird, the Green Fruit Pigeon, in order to attend an important festival. However, after the festival was over, the Grey Parrot never returned the feathers. That vivid red remained upon its body, eventually becoming a unique mark of its identity. Over time, the red tail feather came to hold special cultural and ritual significance in Benin religious traditions. It was once worn by priests and priestesses as a symbol of identity, qualification, and a sacred connection. Sometimes, when something we have borrowed resonates with our lives for long enough, we may unconsciously begin to believe that it has always belonged to us. The voices inside our minds can sometimes be like a parrot, endlessly repeating the same words or ideas. Through repetition, we gradually come to identify with the values and perspectives those voices convey. If every form of habit is built through layers of repetition, then perhaps our personalities, tempers, preferences, dislikes, and even our sense of identity are also the result of accumulated layers. Perhaps all of these elements are things we have borrowed—or continuously accumulated—through the environments and circumstances in which we live. Could we, like the Grey Parrot in the story that never returned the red feathers, eventually mistake the red feather we borrowed for something that has always been our own? Perhaps what we call “identity” is sometimes nothing more than a collection of things we have repeated, absorbed, and carried with us for so long that we can no longer remember where they came from.