Existential Crisis Duck: Finding Mindfulness in Ordinary Duck Life

It was gradually, over the years the duck realized that it was just a Duck. A duck who thought It could beat them all in any game. A duck who thought if it worked hard, trained hard, spent just few hours up, more than everyone else It would reach the top. And it would be some kind of a golden duck that it would be remembered in the duck community. So, just like all the other ducks, it learned. Spent hours and hours memorizing equations, parts of a duck cell, and chemical composition of duck beak. When its friends went down the river to watch the sunset, duck spent my afternoons being anxious about exams, that nobody even knew it was taking. Twenty duck years straight to learn some craft. And when suddenly It was winter, duck found itself stranded in the forest. Alone. It did not know how to fly.

A duck in crisis

What went wrong. The duck knew all the mathematics of aerodynamics. It knew the ideal food with balanced nutrition that It should take to have enough energy. But its wings were lacking power, as all It exercised was its brain. When others left when duck could not join them so it chose to lie down before asked a question. Who am I?

Am I not a brilliant duck? Or am I just another ordinary duck? Why am I a duck? Not a human. An elephant or a deer? Why duck? Just like an ordinary duck It went into an existential crisis.

Birth of an Existential crisis duck.

As a duck It had never experienced this new realm of existential crisis duck level. It had been sad, happy, elated and even angry. But this new thing was a trap. Every day the duck woke up asking the same question. What now? I can see me as just a duck, with all the constraints of a duck soul. I would feel hungry and have to fish like all the other ducks do. I feel sad and happy fishing day in and out. When I try to speak up I just quack. Although I wanted to sound like a nightingale, that was a dream which will never come true. Should I just embrace being an ordinary duck? Should I just pray to God, so he will carry me to heaven when I'm demised. Every day the duck watched its happiness disappear, crushed by this existential crisis. Going fishing no longer felt happy. Duck knew it cannot sustain. It was just an ordinary duck. It could not paint a sunset with its beak so colorfully as it is, so never tried. What is the point it is just a duck life.

Days became weeks and months. The duck knew it was going to end but did not know how or when or why it should. It did not come. But instead of asking who am I? The duck learned to ask different questions.

Mindful

When the duck was depressed, it would ask who was depressed. When the duck was happy It would ask who was happy? When the duck walked along a path it would ask who was walking? Still, it did not see any answer. But the duck felt alive, just experiencing the depressed, happy and walking. Maybe after all these years the duck had chased a wrong target. Maybe the duck was really limitless on its own tiny experience which it failed to recognize as it was blinded by all the stories of extraordinary ducks. Maybe just being an ordinary duck itself is a profound experience. And key to the solving misery of "who am I?" Is just a matter of observation. So now instead of the existential crisis duck, there is a mindful duck who just watches the existence.