A FABLE
The Tortoise and the Hare
in which slow turns out to be enough
· · ·
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Long ago, in a meadow at the edge of a wood, there lived a hare who was very fast, and a tortoise who was very slow.

The hare liked to remind everybody that he was fast. He would run circles around the slower animals. He would stand on the path and laugh as the tortoise plodded by. The tortoise did not say much. The tortoise plodded.

One day, the hare laughed once too often. The tortoise looked up.

"I will race you," said the tortoise.

The hare laughed so hard he fell over. "You? Race me? You are the slowest creature in this meadow. The slowest creature in any meadow."

"All the same," said the tortoise. "I will race you. From here to that tree."

The other animals gathered. The fox said go. The hare shot off down the path like an arrow. The tortoise began to walk.

The hare looked back. The tortoise was very far behind. The hare looked further back. The tortoise was still very far behind. The hare thought, I have plenty of time, and lay down under a different tree, and went to sleep.

The tortoise plodded. The sun moved across the sky. The hare slept on.

When the hare woke up, with a start, he ran toward the finishing tree as fast as he had ever run in his life. But it was too late. The tortoise was already there. The tortoise had walked the whole way without stopping. The tortoise was leaning against the tree, breathing slowly, looking at the hare.

The hare did not say anything. There was nothing to say.

The tortoise nodded once. Then he plodded home, the same way he had come, at the same pace as always.

A long time before Aesop,
a king named Solomon wrote down
something he had learned about races.
Would you like to hear it?
A WRITING OF SOLOMON

Solomon was a king who had watched a great many races in his life. He had also watched a great many wars. He had watched the fastest people lose. He had watched the strongest armies fall. He wrote down what he had seen: the race does not always go to the fastest, and the battle does not always go to the strongest.

The hare was the fastest. The tortoise was the slowest. The hare was so sure of being fastest that he stopped running. The tortoise was never sure of being anything in particular, so he just kept going.

Sometimes the one who keeps going wins. Even when nobody expects them to.

What are you slowly walking toward, that you might finish, just by not stopping?

ECCLESIASTES 9:11
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· · ·
"The tortoise had walked the whole way without stopping."
My second-grade teacher told my mother I was slow. I told you about that. What I did not tell you is that I have been slow my whole life. I read slowly. I think slowly. I make decisions slowly. For a long time I thought this was the worst thing about me. Then I built a business out of slow decisions, one at a time, for twenty-five years. The fast ones around me kept jumping into things and jumping back out. I just kept walking. I am still walking. I will be walking when most of the fast ones have stopped. The tortoise knew something. So do I.
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, Maria, 58, El Paso
❦
there is another story about somebody
who kept doing the same small thing
every day, three times a day,
by the same window, no matter what. his name was Daniel.
A FABLE BY AESOP