Never settle for fake belonging, just ask the Ugly Duckling
Turns out, you've been a swan this whole time.
Page 225 of fairy tales and stories, Hans Tegner, 1900
When you feel like you’ve looked high and low and still can’t find the people who get you, it can be very tempting to settle for just any-old-body.
Enter the Ugly Duckling, to show us why you never settle even when that ish gets real scary. Because it’s going to turn out you were never a duck: You were always a swan. This is the real story of the Ugly Duckling, and maybe yours too.
From the beginning, the Ugly Duckling was dropped into a family that was never going to understand him. They wanted him to do duck things. He tried, he really did, but he wasn’t very good at the duck things. His mother tried to vouch for him but in the end, she was very concerned about what the fowl society thought. The banded turkey, highest member of the fowl council, even told his mother she should disown him to get rid of him (or worse).
One thing about the Ugly Duckling, he didn’t stay where he wasn’t wanted. His siblings bullied him. The barnyard worker kicked him around. He got the picture, so he made his mother’s decision for her and left. No note, no contact.
A baby duck still needs somewhere warm to go so he found himself in a farmhouse next, keeping the company of a hen and a cat. They told him to be like them and his troubles would be over. But their favorite pastime was judging everyone else and being generally insufferable. The final straw for the Ugly Duckling was when he said he loved swimming and his “friends” told him that swimming was dumb and he shouldn’t do it. He saw that for the dismissal of his interests and assimilation tactic that it was and said, you know what? Nah. If I have to be like you to belong, I’ll keep looking. He left.
He did find a flock of wild ducks who seemed like a closer match to him. They said he could stick around as long as he didn’t try to marry any of them or become a true part of their group. He was still a baby, marriage wasn’t really on his mind, so he hung around for a while in that temporary situation. The universe will never let something that isn’t for you last in comfort, though, as he found out when his new wild duck “friends” were tragically hunted during duck season. He wept for him, because even through all the weirdo energy and mistreatment, he was not one to let others harden his heart. He only sought to find where he belonged.
So that seemed to be it for the Ugly Duckling. He spent the winter alone on a frozen lake with only one lone antisocial raven for the company of another living thing. As he settled into icy isolation, he watched a flock of swans fly overhead, heading south to their winter home. He thought they were the most beautiful beings he had ever seen, and felt a sense of longing he couldn’t explain. Winter deepened, and he entered a dark night of the soul. He didn’t belong anywhere, it seemed. Even though he had refused to settle, that seemed to mean there was no place for him in the world. He decided that when spring came and the swans returned, he would go to them and ask them to take him out of his misery.
Months he sat alone, him and that not-much-company-at-all raven, never returning to any of the warmer but much more hostile environments he had already left behind. Spring did its thing at long last, as it always does, and the the swans returned. He swam over to them, as he had planned. “I know I’m ugly,” he told them. “And you are beautiful. So do what you will with me. I can’t take this any longer.” He looked down into the water, dejected, waiting for his fate. And as he did, he saw his reflection. But was it his? He looked up and the beautiful swans were bowing to…him? He looked around, confused, and the tree over the pond was bowing to him, too. Two children came running out of a nearby house yelling for their mother to come see “the most beautiful bird”—they meant him! Not only was he finally accepted, he was celebrated.
Many interpretations of the story end with: Thank god he got pretty, ugly no more, problem solved. Sure, there’s that. But it misses the more major point of our duckling friend’s intense journey.
What he finally saw in the water as his winter of survival melted away, was the physical result of everything he had been through. His belonging wasn’t because he was suddenly beautiful, but because his transformation made everything he had always been on the inside visible to the world.
He never stopped being anything but himself, even when being himself got him the worst kinds of treatment.
He refused the roles others wanted him to play to belong in their stories:
The “lesser” son
The tagalong roommate
The grateful guest
Through all of the challenges and isolation, the Ugly Duckling stayed dedicated to his true nature. He was prepared for that to mean that he would never belong anywhere. And still he did not settle for less than full belonging.
That commitment to himself is exactly what allowed his fellow swans to finally find and recognize him. The children called him the most beautiful bird, not just for being a swan, but even the most beautiful of the swans. That glow up he saw in the mirror of the pond was the reflection of what he had gone through and what he had gained through his refusal to settle for those who didn’t accept him and his absolute disinterest in being anyone or anything but himself. It was the outer manifestation of the swan heart he had had and kept all along.