Ducklings
The other day I saw a young bunny - baby, toddler? - standing on his handpaws and using its other paws to hold onto my large planter while nibbling delightfully on my dill. I was impressed. Not overjoyed that it was eating my dill, but truly impressed. Nature is showing us how, even if there are areas we’ve been afraid, we can become bold, just like Despereaux, or that baby bunny!
There is a squirrel who lives nearby who has has a little stubby tail like a bunny. This squirrel does just fine. Its missing tail is not holding it back from climbing or enjoying a good nutty treat as it pleases. It has friends, but they have realized it doesn’t need coddling anymore.
There is a bunny who has no tail at all - yet it goes on, happy as far as I can tell.
We’ve all been through a lot.
Yet we are part of nature, and nature finds ways to adapt, to thrive and to live fully.
Someone’s been eating even my milkweed, chomping it right off. And now for a couple of years marigolds are no longer a deterrent to whatever I plant in the garden!
What if we humans too are adapting and will adapt so that we can thrive in spite of the toxins in our environment - and in some cases even learn to harness them in useful ways?
There is a little gathering of water just off from a main lake near where I live and it’s known as the duck pond. Yet for several years, there have been no ducks - or last year, we saw two males that looked someone downcast, as if they tried to get everyone to come to the party, but no one showed up.
I was worried - did the University capture them all for experimentation? had they all died from lake pollution somehow without any visible bodies to show for it? My husband was sure they simply had moved on to another location and would be back.
The other day we took a brief trip to that spot and….drumroll…THE DUCKS ARE BACK!!!!! I don’t have pics but picture a bunch of glossy necked dudes in their turquoise female-impressing regalia, but only two females in sight. One is paddling around. The other, along with her five or six duckings trailing at her cute ducky wing-butt, is the picture of “all is well,” and cuteness itself.
Let it be said, this wife is happy when she is wrong and her husband is right. I am right a lot of the time, but I also get it wrong sometimes! That’s the joy of being human: getting surprised, learning, recognizing that we have a lot to contribute, but we might not always get it right and that’s okay!
How do you feel about admitting that someone else was right and you were either wrong, or possibly missing a piece of the puzzle?
What’s something you’ve been wrong about? Can you feel how whole and intact you are even if you got something simple, little or even something big - not exactly correct?
It seems like we are programmed to hold onto our ideas, but really, we’re all just learning together.
My son and I were talking about facts the other day, and how it would be so much more authentic to say, “The current thinking is…” or “There are four major ways of interpreting this data and they are…” or even, “We don’t know. Our opinions are purely speculative and based on our pre-existing biases. We don’t have the evidence to support any particular conclusion.”