Shouldn't…but Do

A single swan rode the water, usually there are more.

The “Ugly Duckling” comes to mind, off-told tale of self-discovery from Hans Christian Anderson.

A classic motif – unknown, undiscovered soul, suffers wandering hardship until the moment of recognition that everything needed was within, waiting. Vital bridging between the yearned for external image and the internal gift within.

But which came first? The duckling or the egg?

It is easy to identify with the outcast, the wandering duck. Disenfranchisement is commonplace. Recognition of beauty, of the swan, comes from perseverance, courage. A hero’s journey of the avian world.

Misalignment of an avenue into the world, a swan in duck’s clothing, square peg, round hole, that sort of thing. Life energy stifled, the suffering of fluid sorrow that ever comments, ever works upon the problem of alignment.

So which came first? Duckling or egg – which is original?

Are the personal travails of the duckling unique? Did recognition of destiny rise from difficulty, or did it appear as image, the reflection of what was, and what once more shall be?

The egg, an embryonic pattern left behind by a larger world. It is a pattern that revisits the duckling throughout its misery, a pattern for which he yearns, but cannot articulate why.

It is to the egg, to the beautiful yearned-for birds, that the duckling later submits, accepting annihilation, and finding instead sanctuary, Home. The correspondence between original pattern and personal hardship becomes life-giving, rather than life-taking. And it is only secondarily that the duckling is astonished by his stately image, affirmation of his individual place in the world. The collective pattern left in the egg, returns in the personal image.

One swan, an oft-told tale.