A famous children’s fable is called ‘The Ugly Duckling.’ In the fable, there’s one little duck that looks different and feels different from his brothers and sisters and never quite feels like he or she belongs.
The other siblings also notice this and point out that there’s something just different about this duckling. And that thing feels ugly like there’s something wrong with it.
Later in the story, he sees swans flying by, and he has this recognition. “Oh my gosh! That’s what I am! I don’t fit here, but I do fit with them.” And the little ugly duckling joins the swans and feels comfortable, at home, and recognized.
The story goes further than that because it’s a metaphor for life on Earth. Very often, we’re born into a biological family where we don’t feel like we fit. We don’t feel the connection that we think we should feel. We feel odd, like, “Who are these people, and why don’t I feel comfortable with them?”
And, it’s quite possible to make yourself wrong and to find fault with yourself and wonder why you feel rejected or abandoned. And there’s a lot of feeling associated with that.
But then, as you get older, you come in contact with someone or some people who will make you realize, “Oh, wait a minute. This is my family. This is who I’m comfortable with. These are the people who get me. They understand me. They accept me.”
“This is what I’ve always wanted—the feeling of acceptance, love, compassion and re-creation. These people are my family. These are my brothers and sisters. My longing is complete.”
I want to take the story further because it’s possible that once you find your true family, the ego makes the original family wrong and bad, and everybody who isn’t like you is now judged.
Try to think of it this way. The family you find later in life helps you have the courage to be who you are and not second guess yourself. And, with that courage, acceptance, and love, you need to go back and collect your other family, too.
You may say, “But the other family was mean and they criticized the duckling!”
Maybe that was their job. Maybe that was their agreement – to give the duckling a chance to find the truth about him or herself. Maybe it was all an agreement.
You may come to realize that all of the people in your life and all of the circumstances and all of the surroundings were put there (even the hardships) not to do something to you but to do something for you– to help you find strength, to help you with discernment, to help you know yourself truly.
Once you find your family, don’t isolate. Expand your family again from that place of strength and compassion to include all of those who would oppose you and those who don’t quite see life the way you see it.
There’s an innocence to all of it. And their innocence is your innocence.
Your joining with them is joining with yourself – not in their beliefs, not in their actions. You don’t have to go back and live with them.
But, you’ll want to neutralize the valence that you may have put on them for the early part of your life and see them as part of a grand family, a tapestry where every piece is vital to your growth and development and you are vital to theirs.
This is what love does. It accepts, includes, and expands so no one is left out.
Thanks to Dr. Jim Goldstein for his work with those who feel they have never belonged.
