The Tale of the Wild Ducks

Wild ducks migrate every winter—not because of the cold, but because of food.

If you start feeding them where they are, they stop flying south. Do it long enough and they’ll forget how to migrate altogether.

Then one winter, if you stop feeding them, they won’t go anywhere. They’ll just stay. And die.

I’ve seen versions of this in my own career. I work in design and advertising. Over the years, I’ve noticed this big trench of middle managers who, after five or six years of work, land in a job that’s “just right.” The pay is decent, the hours manageable, the work familiar. They stay there for years. They’re not bad at what they do, in fact, they’re often useful enough that the organization keeps them around. But they stop moving.

It’s not just in offices. There’s a security guard I cross everyday and an ice cream peddler outside the Vasant Vihar Club who’s been in the same spot for twenty years. They seem content, and maybe there’s peace in that. But I sometimes wonder if it’s a life fully lived, or if, like the ducks, they just stopped flying one day and never started again.