Profound paragraph

“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“I nodded at the time, though I still didn’t fully understand. That evening, as the light slowly faded, I sat on the front steps, watching the shadows of the trees stand still in the distance. Suddenly, a small bird landed on the fence and began to sing softly. The song was simple, yet it quieted something inside me.“

“I began to realize that some things do not need explaining. Their mere existence is already something precious. They harm no one and ask for nothing, offering only the best part of themselves to the world.“

“After that, whenever I heard such a song, I would think of those words again—that some things are wrong not because they are written in rules, but because they harm what should never have been harmed.”