You Were Meant For Me (And I Was Meant For You)

As I was driving to work today I saw something that made me smile: A pair of ducks on the water. Now, you may ask why something like this would put a smile upon my face. I'm not a duck enthusiast or anything of the sort. I can take them or leave them as far as the animal world goes. But, a duck pairing is truly something special. Something to be emulated.

Did you know that when ducks mate, they mate for life?

It's such a simple concept, yet the depth of it is astounding to me. One partner. For life. Wouldn't the human race benefit from something like that? Which lead to a different question for me: Why weren't all animals created equal?

It's a question I can't answer, nor do I think I want to try. But, what if people were like that, though? What if humans had the ability to fall in love only one time and were able to spend the rest of their life with just one person without ever knowing the want or need of looking for love elsewhere. That you were mated for life. Hmmm.

Anyone who has ever been in love or, if not, seen love in a movie or heard about it in a song can tell you how powerful a force it truly is. It can render all your senses useless in a good way. You eat, drink, and sleep the other person. It's a heady experience, to put it lightly. Why, then, is it so easy to fall out of love? It happens every day with breakups, divorces, court proceedings. Why is love so fickle? Why can't people want to be with the their first love for life?

I suppose it's just the nature of the beast. Humans are ruled by their emotions. Ducks, I'm guessing, are probably not emotional creatures, save Daffy and Donald. They mate to perpetuate the species. Humans let their feelings guide their way, and sometimes they stumble and fall. And sometimes they breezily finish the marathon, though rarely. Love is not a static thing. It ebbs and flows, the same as all other human emotions.

Sometimes love is permanent, sometimes it lasts a week. No one can define for another person the love they should and should not feel. It's different for every person. But, I still think the duck concept is a nice one. One couple together, forever, with death being the only thing eventually tearing them apart.

On that cheery note, I'll leave you with something that made me cry the first time I heard about it. Not only do ducks mate for life, but something happens when one in the pair disappears. If one in the duck pair dies or is killed, the other will swim around and around searching for their lost mate. It's as if the whole course of their existence has been thrown off, and they cannot function as a singular being. They are lost. It's tragic and beautiful all at the same time.