Summary: According to my dusty savings brochure—the one I picked up on a long ago visit to the bank—my hypothetical $10,000 investment should be approaching six figures by now. At the time, I was wide-eyed with possibility and eager to get a nest egg going and pad it with lots and lots of money. According to those idealized financial stats, I should also have 2.x worldly, well-mannered kids, a passably handsome pot-bellied husband (possibly my second), a 'green' house in the 'burbs, an insistent middle-age tummy and recurring daydreams from my corner office cube of priceless MasterCard- and Corona-themed getaways in the Keys. I should have it all by now. All this and more could have been mine, providing my ducks were in a row. They ain't. Then again, if I'm to believe the other prevailing voices of media, I should have about 5 unruly jail-bound kids by now, each with distinctly different though disorderly babydaddies cruising and bruising through the inner city streets, burgling helpless old folks' homes to feed their latest fixes, never to be heard from again. So says that twisted branch of the media, my chances at marriage, stability and a piece of the so-called pie are all but dwarfed by the likelihood I'll be jacked by terrorists first. Well. I'm here to tell you that not only is having ducks in a row overrated, it's also relative and unrealistic at best. Why? Because it depends on whose ducks we're talking about, and whose standards I agree to accept as my own. Version A of this duck business puts me sadly behind the Joneses with little hope of 'catching up' — my measly ducks stumbling blindfolded through traffic toward the nearest puddle. Version B, however, shows me impressively outpacing my peers with an embarrassment of riches of ducks in a row, crowding the pond, plump and healthy, carefree and overflowing in a queue on land anxious to jump in and join the fun. Either way, I'm screwed. If I'm to translate all of this into Energy language – and I am – it's a great way to lose oneself in a never ending hunt for status and approval based on an impossible shifting series of standards that I had no part in creating in the first place. It's also an insidious losing game I'd be playing either way because, whether I was aware of it or not, I'd always be buying into somebody else's value system, not to mention a collective one of an entire culture, which means I can never measure up. Or worse, it would mean that I've already measured up and exceeded what 'they' expected of me and, therefore, I should just sit down now and enjoy my relative successes. See how easy it becomes to 'leak' energy when we use other people's measuring sticks – and ducks – to gauge our own progress? On a recent hike around the lake, I stopped to watch a family of ducks on the water. They bathed, spread out and ate their bugs or whatever on their own and after a while, seemed to come back together as though on cue. But here's the thing: the ducks weren't all in a tidy little row as they made their way across. There was a shiny little one in the back still doing curly cues and pecking at stuff along the water's surface as she went. I couldn't tell what she was so enamored with, but she certainly had my attention; maybe she was kissing her reflection and validating her own beautiful self along the way. And even though she took her time spinning around, frolicking and bringing up the rear, she never lost sight of where she was going. She didn't fall far behind her group either. And all the while she simply knew she belonged. When I look at how my own proverbial ducks are lining up, I take comfort in the family I saw on the water not too long ago. Probably because I've got a few spinners and lame ducks of my own. Still, I know that rather than comparing them to the Jones ducks across the way, or subjecting them to anyone else's assessment, I know I'm doing just fine. And you are too, honey! But that's for you to decide, now ain't it?
