Let me ask you something. Are you a glass-half-empty or a glass-half-full person?

I know which one I am.

I'll admit that when most people hear the phrase Everywhere You Go, I'll Be Watching You, the first thing that comes to mind is the Sting song — and with it, a certain unsettling feeling. Surveillance. Control. Obsession. The creepy version.

That's not what I see in this photograph.

I took this at Bridgeport Shopping Center, not far from where I live. They have a duck pond there — a genuinely lovely one, with turtles and Canadian geese and half a dozen varieties of ducks that commute back and forth across a busy street to reach a second pond in the development across the way. I've watched drivers stop their cars in the middle of traffic, get out, and stand guard while a mama duck and her chicks make the crossing. People will do that. It's one of the things I love about people.

On the right kind of day — clouds building, light doing something interesting — I'll head over with my camera just to see what's happening at the pond.

On this particular day, this was what was happening.

Look closely at the image. There's a drop of water falling from the beak of one of the ducklings at the edge of the stone. The others are watching. Waiting. Working up the nerve. You can almost hear the conversation — can we make it? Is it too far? What if we can't?

And up above, watching all of it, is the mama.

Not intervening. Not pushing them. Not solving it for them. Just — watching. Present. Knowing something they don't yet know: they're going to be fine.

We live in a world full of helicopter parents. I understand the impulse — the world feels dangerous, and the instinct to protect is powerful. But there's something in this image that pushes back against all of that. These ducklings are making risky decisions. And they need to. That's how they get strong. That's how they learn what they're capable of.

When I look at this photograph, I don't see surveillance. I don't see control.

I see God. Keeping an eye out. Knowing it's doable. Letting them figure it out anyway.

Everywhere you go, I'll be watching you.

Glass half full. Every time.