This blog post was written sometime a long time ago.
There is this duck that hangs out around my apartment’s pool. It’s not a spectacular duck by any means, by any duck standards at least. It’s wet feathers are slicked back like a 50’s greaser hairstyle. It never looks at me, but its duck body stiffens whenever I walk up. He’s always aware that a presence is there, but he offers no movement to signify this. Now ducks don’t reside in pools. Or rather, are not supposed to. Maybe a man-made pond at a park, maybe a small creek somewhere near a garden. I don’t assume to know where ducks reside, but usually not a blue, chlorine infused, sweaty public pool. Although, this duck, always comes back to this pool, just standing there, his lamp-like body supported by the spatulas that are his feet. I’ve only really seen him swim in the pool once, usually he just stands there by the side looking forward, sometimes looking down. He just seems to be still there. Just standing there, he is just duck. All he knows is that he is duck. Actually, I wonder if he even knows that. He has no care in the world, the least of these, being my presence or anyone walking past him for whatever reason. We all walk past him chasing purposes, or assumed purposes. For this duck his existence is different, his very purpose is this: just being poolside, for the purpose of being there. Now, technically the duck does have one inclination towards his life: be in close proximity to water. It doesn’t know how close or how far away, it just knows it needs to be near water. For this duck, he is where he believes he needs to be. To us, he is wrong, for us, he might be the most amusing part of our day: “Oh, look at that duck who doesn’t know that that’s a pool.” But for this duck, he is less concerned about outside perception, rather inward intention, and something within him, cliché or not, instinctual or otherwise, tells him to come back to this pool. Because to him, he is supposed to.
So there he remains, where he believes he is supposed to be. His instinct somehow guides him towards this pool, and there he remains. His posture does not seem like he waits there until everything makes sense, nor does it show confusion. His stance just shows disturbing contentment, with where he has been lead. I feel like I’m that duck. I feel like I’m at this place in my life where I know I’m meant to be by an ocean, but for some reason I am by a pool. And I’m starting to realize that that’s okay, that life is not so much what we’re doing with it, but what life is doing with us, and where God is leading us. So I no longer give power to the sentiment of “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life” because I don’t and I probably never will. But I don’t believe God has given us life to subscribe to the belief that what we do within it is all that matters, but rather maybe life is the platform for God to do things within us. The fun part, I’ve come to realize, is the sitting, the waiting, the wrestling, the itchiness, the tension, the scary reality that what we’ve waddled to, may not be an ocean at all, but at least we are somewhere close to where we think we need to be.