My Duck Story
My favorite place to get answers and quiet the mind is walking in Nature. I have a great trail near my house along a creek that flows into a river. The mountain views, the water and brisk walk provide a walking meditation for me. If I am stuck or looking for answers, quite often it will come to me on one of my rambling walks.
One particular day I was struggling with a decision I knew it was time to make. It was about change and as we all know moving in a new direction, taking risks, defining new paths takes courage and I was struggling with how to make that happen. The answer that came to me in the form of a female duck is worth sharing!
I was standing on the river bank watching the ducks. Two ducks, a male and a female floated up to where the river got shallow over the rocks so they could not continue to float down the river. They swam back a ways and then came back to the spot where they couldn’t float down any further. They did this a few times, floating in circles and then back up to the same spot. Finally the male duck decided to walk over the 8 feet of rocks. He slipped and splashed on down and I inwardly gave an ooh and ouch for him but he went on down and made it to the pool of water at the end of the rocks and swam on down to where the other ducks had gathered at the edge of the river.
The female duck, well there really is no other word for it, dithered. She swam up to the shallow rocks then went in a circle back up the river around 6 feet, then she swam up to where the male duck had walked down and then floated back in a circle. Over and over she went back and forth, looking at it and then swimming away. The male duck was quacking at her to “come on” (yes I speak duck), and urging her to just do it.
This continued for some time as I watched I had to wonder if she was going to follow the male down the rocks or not. I finally decided to turn around and head back the trail when all of a sudden she let out a loud quack and took off flying. She very smoothly landed with a glide next to her mate. I started laughing and laughed most of the way back to my car. The female duck gave me the answer to what I was seeking that day.
We do not have to do it the traditional male’s way or the hard way. The ancient female wisdom is powerful and here for us now and very different from the male’s way. We DO NOT have to follow where the male leads. We do not have to struggle to follow what does not work for us to be successful. The female duck showed me we don’t have to do it the hard painful way. We have to think outside of the box to embrace and remember new ways of being and doing. We can choose not to follow our old mental programming and male dominated methods. We can find our wings and fly over the obstacle and end up exactly where we want to be! Quack Quack.
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