The rabbit and tortoise took positions. The race commenced at
the sound of the gun and both of them were off the block. Rabbit took up its
natural speed from the word ‘go’ while tortoise was inching towards the finish
line. This was the race of life - a marathon where the distance was longer than
what the rabbit could finish on one sprint.
Midway through the race, the rabbit wanted to take a close
look at where he was in comparison to where he thought he would be and not
where tortoise could reach up to. This was needed for him to re-strategise the
race, if needed, of course.
Rabbit was also out of breadth, perspiring and wanted to take a step
back to move forward taking a cue
from Vidya’s blog version (negative) 1.0 which he read just a day ago J. Intelligent, Huh! And people
thought rabbit was only a snob and not-so-steady.
Planning to take some rest, he did some calculation on
approximate time it would take for the tortoise to catch up the distance and
set the alarm clock accordingly. He did not forget to keep a buffer of 10
minutes from his overall time estimate just to give himself a fair chance.
Alarm bell went off and he woke up. Seeing his competition still
at some distance, he started again and finished the race on time.
I still cannot figure out why the
poor tortoise agreed to race with the rabbit. It could be probably due to pressure of
expectation from his family and friends. He was to excel in all the fields as
dreamt by his parents. His dreams did not matter.
Knowing fully well his capabilities
and shortcomings by then, he concluded enough was enough and decided that racing
was not his cup of tea and hence made the most important decision of his life -to
look for his core competency area.
Moral of the story: Fast and steady
wins the race. Focus on what you are good at. Analyze where you are against
your own self and not with your competition.
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Popular Story with a twist-2: Tortoise and the Swans
The swans took to the skies in search
of better life along with the tortoise that could not fly. Swans wanted to help the tortoise transport to
a new lake to get saved from severe drought in that area. The instruction to
tortoise was to hold onto the stick and not to open his mouth lest he fell from
a height.
Eventually, after quite a few miles in the flight, tortoise
could not stay put up with the condition and opened its mouth to blabber
something- the talkative that it was.
Falling from a height, he was trying to figure out ways to
save himself and praying hard. Meanwhile he was looking frantically all around
for something to hold on to while keeping his cool.
God helps those who help themselves and in this case, God
did. The tortoise fell on a big heap of straws in a village and survived with
some minor injury. With its presence of mind, it acted smart and created a
story to the villagers. He made them believe that was God sent and the
villagers should take good care of him for their well being.
He lived through, somewhat happily, for the rest of his life
with the villagers' fate moving up and down affected by other factors in life –
natural, political, economic.
The tortoise proved once again that one should be ready to
face the challenges and should be smart and resourceful enough to convert the
situation in his favor.
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P.S: The above writings are not intended to hurt any feelings or sentiments with popular stories.
