Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Whose Goose Are You?

Why a goose?
courtesy of www.morguefile.com

You've surely heard the tale. The gift of a goose. A goose who gives gifts. That gift being gold. It's an uncertain, uncomfortable gift. (Surely for the goose!) It's wealth unearned, beyond expectation. It's a "dare I believe it's true?" sort of gift. The kind that makes life easier, leaves room for breath and a respite from worry. It seems indefinite, but the future is unsure. Will it continue to give? What should we do about it? Will we worry about tomorrow? Or shall we just be thankful for today? Why a goose?

Geese are vulnerable - those long, slender necks - but the vulnerability is deceptive. They are powerful. Geese are ridiculous and beautiful. They are strong, territorial, and fierce. They are loyal, smart, and they have a clear sense of direction. They can fly around the world, but have a sense of home. They are devoted to their partners, prolific, protective. They fall somewhere between the absurdity of ducks and the undeniable elegance of swans. They honk and waddle and, well, goose; but watch them swim, fly in formation - great black V's against the autumn sky - or tend to their young and it's an organic, fundamental, almost geometric beauty they possess.

What would you do with a goose that laid golden eggs? One a day for... how long? As long as they stuck around, I suppose. It's not up to you. What would you do with this goose? With these precious eggs? Where would you even begin to sort it out?

I have a flock of these geese. An entire flock. When I try to stop and count them, think I have a firm accounting, I remember one more and one more. Wealth unearned, beyond expectation. A "dare I even believe it's true?" sort of gift. I have this flock of magic geese, yet I am not special. These geese are all around us. All of us. Every day.

In her post Deb rattled something loose when she said "a goose is not a gumball machine." It is a living, breathing, loving-for-life being. My gold, therefore, from these geese is not the stuff of ingots and doubloons. It is far more valuable than that. Its price per ounce is immeasurable, ineffable. It does not rise and fall with the economic waves. My gold is untouchable, incorruptible, eternal. My geese come sometimes daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes every few weeks or so. My geese, my lovely gaggle of geese, come to me in person - muddy, messy, goosey life - and virtually - the light and pixels of dancing words in messages, posts, comments, pictures. I even have a few geese who no longer inhabit this earth, yet somehow have managed to leave me a cache of treasure to find when I need it.

This gold, these geese - they will not pay my bills (duck bills) they will not make me rich in any sort of common way. But they make me wealthy beyond measure in the things that really matter. These golden eggs get tossed my way, and yours, in tolerance, loyalty, love, kindness, trust, companionship, respect, in such abundance my arms overflow and I run out of places to put them. In the face of such great magnitude I would be ungrateful and miserly indeed not to share this wealth. Look around you, take in the glittering piles of gold that fill the corners of your life. You cannot miss it for looking, you cannot say it isn't there. For every rotten, stinking fart of a dud that gets sent your way, how many precious gold gifts outnumber it? Wealth unearned, beyond expectation.

Do we look for the gold from only the right geese? Are we disappointed because the ones we've hand-picked as valuable refuse to lay? Do we kick aside the piles of gold freely given us in order to chase a goose that has flown away? Do we look and say: Oh yes, you've given me this gift, but your waddle is silly and your beak is all wrong? Do we degrade our fiercely loyal, protective, practical and devoted geese by wishing they were swans? Do we forget to see them in their grandeur, in their element - that pumping, streamlined V on a steady course, that gliding grace across the face of the water - and see only the ridiculous honking and bobbing, goosing gait?

Geese are not particularly noble creatures on the surface. They are complicated and diverse. They are practical, hardworking, intense. There is beauty in their contradictions, their idiosyncratic selves. They are a feathered bundle of ridiculous and proud, of vicious and loving, of vulnerability and strength. They are you and me. The question is not "What would you do with a goose who laid golden eggs?" One would hope the natural reaction - the human and humane - would be to cherish it, protect it, appreciate it. The question becomes instead: "Whose goose are you? Where are you laying your golden eggs?"


Many, many thanks to Deb at Kicking Corners for sparking this line of inquiry with her delicious Fairy Tale Friday. Also to Tara at Faith In Ambiguity for lodging waterfowl so firmly in my brain this week with your misogynistic duck antics and for building a Battered Duck Shelter; and to Marie at The (Not Always) Lazy W for sharing the exploits of your Mia, the magical cuddling, hot-tubbing goose.

21 comments:

  1. So many goosey geesey posts to read!

    This was beautiful TangledLou, there's so much food for thought here. I will go nibble on it a bit at a time. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're welcome, darling. Thank you for always being such an encouragement. You are pure gold.

      Delete
  2. Tearfulness in the afternoon, this just does not happen often around here. xoxo What a beautifully insightful, humbling piece! Wow. You have hit some truths here for sure, on many levels. And you're right, Mia is the embodiment of them all. (The windows are open and I can hear him honking for attention right this second...xoxo)

    The quest for perfection in every aspect of life, in every relationship, sure can cause us to miss the big picture, to fail to cherish our geese, whoever they are.

    I love the idea that we can be that treasure for others, too, which is a slippery concept sometimes, always trying to quantify things. Just unconditional love, that's a good start. xo

    Keep writing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A beautiful response to a beautiful post.

      Delete
    2. Yes to both! Marie - you are a goose to me, with your lovely images of a simple, hardworking life. And your Mia... oh to meet him one day.

      Delete
  3. Wow, count on you to start with something like geese and take us on a magical, inspiring journey that makes us look for golden magic lying around our lives, in the assorted fellowship–the gaggle–that surrounds us with its merry cackle.

    Sometimes, I want to live in Periphery longer than I can afford, seeing those things you keep revealing just out of the corner of my eye, that, once seen, make life all the richer. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow. Nicest comment, ever. I like when you hang around on the Periphery.

      Delete
  4. Great continuation of Deb's post's.

    Beautifully written!!

    I hope we all discover our golden eggs - that we lay and that others lay around us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! She did such a super job setting it all up...

      Delete
  5. This is wonderful. I hope I'm someone's goose! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. So many points that I love in this post! I keep wanting to highlight them and put them in my comment so you know specifically what caught my eye and my heart, but then I realized I'd be copy-pasting most of the whole thing. Heh. None of that, none of that.

    So we'll just stick with me sighing contentedly and saying, "I love it. So much."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So glad you love it! Thank you so much for the brain jerky and the inspiration!

      Delete
  7. Wow. This has given me lots to think about! I know the geese that give me golden eggs, but now I'm going to give thought to who calls me their goose....and make sure my eggs for them are golden.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, yes. I am doing exactly the same thing these last few days.

      Delete
  8. I love this and kind of needed to hear most of it. I've been edging perilously close to Funk this past couple weeks and Funk is built of many things, but now I see it's built in large measure by not seeing the eggs for the farts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As much as I abhor cliche, it is my secret hope that something I write be quoted so often that it becomes a cliche. I wish I had thought of "not seeing the eggs for the farts"!
      I understand about dancing with the Funk. It's why I write half the happy-feel-good stuff I do. I'm the one most in need of reminding.

      Delete
  9. This was not at all what I was expecting when I read the title. Beautiful post- so inspiring, with lots of food for thought!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Were you expecting funny? I'll find funny in a few days for you.

      Delete

Thanks for reading and taking the time to say hello!