The Little Wild Duck

Sunday afternoon I took my son to the park to play ball.

On the way there, my husband Dapeng saw it first. He pointed for me to look: there was a little wild duck in the pond.

The little duck had a small twig in its beak. Beside it, cattails were growing.

I looked over, the way he was pointing.

And in the moment I saw it, I suddenly felt that I had seen this scene somewhere, a very long time ago.

It was when I was ten years old. The same kind of pond, the same kind of little wild duck, the same cattails.

For a moment, I felt lost. I couldn't tell whether I was the forty-year-old me, or the ten-year-old girl. The thirty years in between seemed to simply vanish. I just stood there, looking at that duck with the twig in its beak, and felt exactly the same as I had thirty years ago.

Later, I slowly understood something.

Usually, we are always thinking about so many things. The past, the future, whether we've grown old, how many years have gone by, how much is still left undone. Our heads are full.

But today, when I was simply looking at that duck, all of it suddenly disappeared. I wasn't thinking about the past, or the future. I was just looking at it.

And in that moment, time seemed to stop, and I was ten years old again.

I wondered: why are children so full of life every day, so curious?

I think it's because they don't think about all those things, the past and the future. They see a duck, and it's simply a duck, and they look at it happily, with their whole heart.

It turns out we can be like that too. As long as we don't pile so much up in our hearts, don't count how old we've grown or how many years have passed, and simply look, really look, at what's in front of us. A flower. A duck. Our child playing ball.

Then, it seems, we too can be like a child, fresh every day, full of life, full of wonder.

Thank you to that little wild duck. And thank you to Dapeng, for seeing it first.

— Marie, Founder of Lyfairs