Ugly Duckling 2.0 — Scrambled Eggs
The events of this story happen one generation after the original ugly duckling story.
A confused farmer found an egg outside his homestead. He looked around befuddled, and after a wild guess if it belonged to his chickens, ducks or geese, he decided to place it in 1 of the duck’s nests within the barn.
Weeks go by, and the egg hatched. This little bird was an odd-looking thing. One of the yellow ducklings pointed, “What is that? She cannot be one of us!”. “I have never seen such an ugly duckling!”, said another. The other ducklings quacked, “Ugly! Ugly! Ugly!” The Ugly Duckling did not know why the other ducklings were yelling at her. She took the last spot in the line as the mother led her ducklings.
As she looked awkwardly unusual, she became a matter of teasing which amounted to bullying. Not only did she look different, she was not able to learn in the same pace. As the ducklings jumped in the river and swam behind Mama Duck, they started getting used to the swim as if it came with natural instincts. Not for the Ugly Duckling, she had a hard time paddling, and took a much longer time to get to it. She was the only remaining duckling who couldn’t swim.
“This duckling is worse than the cygnet! Can’t even swim!”
“Go away! We will not play with you! You are ugly. And you walk weird and you are stupid.”, they yelled at her. This is a common thing she had to face for a long time. Something she adapted to, something she accepted.
“Young bird, I don’t know what you are. I don’t know why you can’t do anything you’re taught!” the mother duck squawked. This brought the Ugly Duckling’s spirits further down. “But you are capable of something, it’s just something that isn’t part of our reality, yet. Young bird, you must make reality.”
One day the skies grew dark and shadows of the menacing predators scarred the ground. The eagles were out, hunting. The drill Mama duck taught them came into play. “Duck”, yelled Mama duck, as all the ducks took to their hiding to stay alive.
The little diffident bird popped up from behind one of the rocks and admired the soaring convocation and thought, “What mighty birds they are ! I wonder what they are”.
As the ducks regathered, the Ugly Duckling looked for her ‘mother’. “Where’s the mother duck? What did you do with her?!” The other ducks screamed at the Ugly Duckling. No one ever saw the mother duck again. The farmer moved the farm soon after, bringing only a few of his animals. The eagles kept purging the farm causing costly problems. The Ugly Duckling was left behind along with only a few of his siblings. Some of her siblings couldn’t take care of themselves without a mother and had to keep finding a better home.
One night, the Ugly Duckling flew over the farmyard fence, leaving her chance of finding her mother. The abandoned farm fields were littered with the ducklings who couldn’t make it, crops that dried up, and only one grown duck who died saving her ducklings. The Ugly Duckling landed on the other side of the lake. She stayed at that lake all by herself, and time passed. The leaves of the trees transformed into deep reds and golds, and then the leaves rained to the ground. Winter came, setting a blanket of white snow all over. The cold wind and the dark clouds made the Ugly Duckling feel even more sad. The lonely Ugly Duckling grew, but loneliness never departed her.
One day while swimming and flopping in the water alone, she was met by a large bundle of feathers and a scythe like beak. It’s too late to duck, it had spotted her. Thinking it was her end, the eagles landed nearby and asked, “What a strange bird. Where did you learn to swim like that?”
“DUCK!” She yelled, as she covered her head from the sharp eyes of the eagle as more landed nearby. “Duck?! What duck? I’m not a duck, I’m an eagle!” The eagle responded. The Ugly Duckling kept hidden as the other eagle pushed the Ugly Duckling’s wings out of her face. The duckling spoke in a fluster “Then I guess you don’t eat stupid ducks who can’t swim or walk right.” The eagle fixed his feathers in confusion “You think you’re a duck? We eagles don’t duck, we are ducked from. We don’t need to fear because we are feared by even humans themselves. You think you’re a duck then, you can ‘duck’ your whole life or live as the eagle you are.”
“‘Eagle I am?’” She repeats. The “duck” looks up for the first time in a long time, through shining eyes she stares up to the clouds and raises her large pale wings to the sky. She’s shocked at how big they are, bigger than what her mother’s wings were once! She smelled the air through her hooked golden beak that ripped through the air as she rose her head higher.
At one moment, all the eagles flapped their wings and took off into the sky. “Come with us,” the eagle who first came called back. “Take the lead!” So she flapped her wings and shook the sky as she led the whole mighty convocation. All her new friends soared and sliced through the open skies. A storm approaches as the duckling who realized she’s an eagle slows down and looks for shelter. “Why’d you slow down? Scared of a little lightning? We braves ride the storms.” The clouds engulf the eagles as they glide into their new chapters. Bulleting through the cold water that falls upon them and melts off the feathers down to earth. Our protagonist looks down to see her small shadow running on the ground as she remembers her mother who once told her — “Make reality”.
Once one egg among many that had rolled out of an eagle’s nest down the mountain. Once a useless duckling who couldn’t swim nor quack. Once a growing bird who was deserted in a dystopia of a farm. Now an eagle who has come home. How many eggs rolled out of that nest, we may never know. How many nests have lost an eagle, we may never know. There are eagles who failed to function as ducks, canaries, sparrows, orioles, hummingbirds, just as these other birds failed to function as eagles.
“It’s too bad others like me, may never see an eagle.” our protagonist thinks as she dozes off to sleep in her new nest high in the mountain where she can see the farm where she once lived.
by `Light` H.C. (concept by Mikail)
Be proactively curious. Make reality you design — real. You may never know what’s there at the next turn. — 2005-05.21
If you have the mind of the gods, would you go around playing with rats? — 2020–03.16
Every epic tales a parable of an ordinary human becoming a legend. We are built for this. We are just looking at someone’s story, wondering if it may be ours someday. Just like the `Ugly duckling` hiding from a convocation of eagles thinking “what mighty birds they are”. — 2020–03.19
Epilogue
One of the fundamental step to move human forward is perhaps the simple lesson of handling praises and criticisms with equal importance. As with insincere praise may be equally worthless as immaterial criticism, constructive criticism may even be more valuable if not equal to an affirming recognition. The incapability of filtering and focusing on the right order, denoting the lack of that vital function to the soundness of judgment, is detrimental to the recognition of that instrumental instruction which may be making that very difference in critical decision, valuation and value.
Institutionalization of benign minds
Children are conditioned to accept the norms of the world through the actions and values of the adults. They have been taught that it is how the way things work and have been preconditioned to accept them. As they grow older they become part of the system as the operating and supporting individuals.
While observing how insurance companies, national policies and their parents’ employing corporations exploiting their adults, they grow up accepting certain forms of diplomatic plundering as the basis of modus operandi. Whileas, if they socialize with caring communities in feeding the people and taking care of the ill, they take similar forms to do the likewise as part of their growing norms.
At Tabula Rosa, we merely perceive, it does not make sense till we conceive them into conceptualization. We begin to accept and react to the notions we have been conditioned to accept, nuances of concepts get more defined, them fatally fixed. — Re: Programming , 2006–08.14
By honoring the diffident and assuring him/ her of his/ her bravery or other virtues likewise, would have readily orient or reorient himself or herself on a level of personal and social contract and expectation, as per se a reaffirmed value. It develops, asserts and causes to be believed in, more intensely and confidently in that virtue; which in turn, reminds, and enforces the concept as instrumental as well as socially and ethically romantic (aesthetic), while at the same time, challenges (and to some extent tantalizes), motivates, him/ her to choose to act on them. — Re: Conditioning and education, 2008-11.15
The mind is programmed from early childhood to answer questions. As the education has conditioned them to cogitate in a prestated, prejudiced manner, guide their path like a baby learning its early steps — a path they can’t help following. — Re: Forcing the answer, suggesting premises, inspiring the conclusions, 2007-05.27
There are no nebbish children with a strong willed father. — Re: The Soong Sisters, “Home on The Range”; Seeding the True Utopia, Thoughts on “spiral-altera”, E.I. Home for 20 children, 2006–08.15
No parent can teach or preach the words courage if they live like cowards. — 2011–10.27
The Gift Of Moral Courage
Courage must be first be impregnated in the mind before it takes form of an intent to weave your fate. Visualize yourself excelling in adversities. This is the fundamental step of courage inculcation. Confidence holds the mind tenacious, faith holds the soul steadfast.