Today, Google Photos helped me remember where I was approximately a year ago: looking around the shop at a well-known American petrol station chain: Buc-ee´s (thanks, Tasha!)

There was a section full of posters, placards and greeting cards with really cool messages, and two in particular caught my attention. But before I show you the first one, for the Spanish-speaking folks, I have to explain an expression in English that we could include in the category of untranslatables: to have your ducks in a row, which literally translates as "tener tus patitos en fila".

Have you ever seen a mammy duck walking with her ducklings? They give you a sense of order and discipline, right? Well, that´s exactly what this phrase conveys: having everything prepared and well organised, everything under control, leaving no loose ends. At work, we use this expression quite frequently when talking about tasks or projects, or, for example, this week, as we´re getting ready to do our quarterly planning, and we want to make sure everything is in order.

OK, once that´s understood, here´s the first picture, a greeting card:

("I do not have ducks. Or a row... I have squirrels, and they´re everywhere.)

Have you ever seen, or, if you haven´t, can you imagine, a family of squirrels running and jumping in different directions? Unpredictable and chaotic; the complete opposite of a family of ducks, isn´t it? Who hasn´t experienced at least once the feeling that they´re losing control, and things are starting to get out of hand?

Which takes me to the second picture, this time it´s a lovely placard that I was very close to purchasing:

("As long as everything is exactly the way I want it, I´m totally flexible)

I think this phrase is absolutaly brilliant, and it fits me like a glove, being an Enneagram type 1 as I am. It humorously portrays the hurdle I tend to trip over much more often than I would like: having unrealistic expectations and then responding rigidly every time they´re not met (and today it happened again, sorry you got the scolding girls).

Linking this idea with the previous one, I realise that, generally, everything is fine and I can go with the flow and be content until one (or several) of the ducklings wanders off the row, and that´s when I catch a glimpse of chaos and the disaster starts... To me, this placard is a reminder that it´s easy to make progress when things are going well for us; the difficult part is not to ruin it all when things start going not so well, which, let´s be realistic, it´s going to be quite often, because life looks a lot more like the family of squirrels than the family of ducks, however hard this may be to accept.

What do you think of these two phrases? Do you identify with any of them? In which way?