duckitude: to live life with resilience and optimism, to live in the present, to display duckiness, to feel ducky. Feeling ducky means feeling good, fine, or wonderful. The most significant historical and traditional aspect of "duckitude" is optimsim and resilience as noted in the almost ancient phrase -- "Like
water off a
duck's back." "The hard times were like water off a
duck's back for him/her."
Resilience is not *just* about optimism — irony and an ironic perspective about the absurdness of many aspects of life can
help keep a ducky floating upright. You can say the words “just ducky” in a tone that conveys, “things are really fine” or you can say it with a tone that translates “not even close to ducky.”
For those who are much more analytical, please note that the attitude of a ducky *is* different than the attitude of a
duck, but similar. So, if that most
popular duck-related quote is “he/she handled it just like
water off a
duck’s back” is true of ducks then it is three times more true of a rubber ducky.
Eckhart Tolle, the author of “A New Earth” and “The Power of Now,” offers us another view of “duckitude.” In both books, Tolle observes that when two ducks get into a tussle, they end it by flapping their wings and
swimming off. As far as he can tell, they
don’t stay
mad – they
don’t carry a grudge. They flap their wings and get on with life. The “
duck lesson,” according to Tolle is “Flap your wings, which translates as ‘let go of the story.’” The human mind, in other words, often gets attached to THE STORY and relives it over and over again, thus, living mostly in the past and not in the present.
If you have duckitude, then you can be said to be duckified — kind of like dignified, but duckier. Use of the word might include “let’s go out and duckify the world” or “I am living the duckified life."
