Something Wrong with Moral Stories - Part 1

Tortoise and the Hare

You already must have heard the story, but still, let me tell you the story in short.

Once there lived in a forest a hare and a tortoise. The hare was very proud of his speed. He made fun of the tortoise for his slow speed. The tortoise challenged the hare to have a race with him. The hare accepted the challenge.

The race started. The crow was the referee. The hare ran very fast. The tortoise was left much behind. The hare stopped to take rest under a tree. He fell asleep. The tortoise passed him and reached the winning post. The hare woke up and ran as fast as he could. He saw that the tortoise was already there at the winning post. He had won the race.

Moral: Slow and steady wins the race.

Whoa!! Bravo!! Great Moral, but wrong message. I agree to the point that being slow and steady doesn't makes a person loser. But it doesn’t makes him/her a winner either. Not at least in this universe in which we are living, out of all the existing parallel universes. In one of them, it might be a truth.

I would like to tweak the moral a bit. Slow and steady wins the race*. Now I will write in the bottom, * terms & conditions apply. Now I can write at least a thousand word essay elaborating these terms & conditions. But I will not, because nobody cares, they are just terms & conditions, but nobody reads them. 

I will now move towards doing an autopsy of this story.  “Hare made fun of the tortoise for his slow speed. The tortoise challenged the hare to have a race with him.” What the hell? What in all the universe, tortoise think of himself? What you will call a bicycle rider challenging a Ferrari rider for a race? Okay, let us assume, tortoise was in anger and wanted to prove himself. Let me even agree that he had confidence of beating hare in race.

Let us move to the later part of the story,

“The hare stopped to take rest under a tree. He fell asleep. The tortoise passed him and reached the winning post. The hare woke up and ran as fast as he could. He saw that the tortoise was already there at the winning post. He had won the race.”

I see a difference here, it is not the case here that tortoise won the race. What exactly appear here to me is, Hare lost it. Don’t ask me what is the difference between both. There is a lot of difference, sincerely speaking, there is a lot of difference between yourself winning a race and everybody else losing it.

It happened once, it may happen twice or thrice or ‘N’ number of times. In real world, Hares don’t sleep during races. They beat every crap out of tortoises, almost daily. Many of these tortoises even commit suicides out of their shame of being loser in this race. I am still not saying, the slow ones are losers but they may not be a winner either. We must stop ourselves feeding people with the false hope that even while being slow, they can win with the people faster than them. They can win over them, only when, either they become fast enough to beat them or faster ones start making mistakes. Being slow and steady, you can eventually grow, you may eventually become faster than what you are right now but you will never be able to beat faster ones, until you become faster than them. But by being slow and steady, tortoise never became a hare, and hare never slept again in any future races. Hare won again and again until tortoise gave up racing with him.

But what happened with tortoise? He might have concluded that he can never win the race unless hare do something silly. So, he might have decided to play his luck with other hares in forest. Or he might have become the fastest tortoise in his herd, because of constant racing. Then, he might have started a ‘Tortoise Olympics’ and had won it every time until somebody else faster than him arose.  

Races we face daily in our lives aren’t much different. Some of us are tortoise and some of us are hares. Hares keep competing among themselves and so the tortoises. Sometimes, a tortoise rises from his herd to challenge hares, he loses it and goes back wherever he belongs. He still remains a hero of his herd. But some of us are hares are disguised as tortoise. We realise our true identity only when we are challenged enough to find our limits. You might have identified yourself as a tortoise while reading this, but believe me, try your luck, push your limits and try to find who are you. Are you a hare or a tortoise? Don’t conclude it soon enough, coming out of cocoon had never been easy for a butterfly, learning to fly had never been easy for a bird, so identifying yourself will not going to be like drinking a cup of coffee. You will fall, you will give up your hope many times. But before giving up just remember why you started. All the best.