(comment on OP's followup question in the UPDATE): The point of the -follow option on find is to allow you to follow a symlink when traversing directories. The default is off^*. find $DIR -follow | xargs $something_destructive would be a bad thing to have run, as it could escape from $DIR.

^* I saw an instance of this in a previous life when a root cleanup job included -follow, and there was a symlink into a networked file system. Cleaned up the entire shared file system. :-/