I think back often lately to a previous commute I used to have.

I used to live a quarter-mile walk to my job -- normally too expensive in the city, but my employer was small enough that their corporate office was in a commercial building in the suburbs.

A short enough distance that the heat wouldn't cause me to work up a sweat, and that I wouldn't mind walking with an umbrella when it rained.

At the beginning of my walk each morning is a stretch of grass and some trees next to a larger canal, which housed a flock of ducks and some other birds.

Every once in a while, a new generation of ducklings would appear.

Over the next couple weeks, the ducklings got bigger and browner, and their down became feathers, and they foraged in the grass, and occasionally feasted on rice and bread and scraps left on the sidewalk by the ladies who walked earlier in the morning.

And then they were so big and brown and feathered that they looked mostly like adults. And there weren't any ducklings anymore for a while.

And then one morning, just when I've forgotten they exist, I'd see the cycle begin anew.