The Turtle who Wins the Race He Doesn't Know He's In

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 The turtle strides to the rhythm of nature, taking one step at a time, each imperceptible, yet ever progressing, then wins a race he doesn’t know he’s in.

Photo by John Nzoka on Unsplash

I was not trained to stride to the rhythm of nature, but to the drum of the Energizer Bunny, that mascot toy for the battery that keeps “going and going and going.”

Even after everyone else’s batteries are dead, this bunny’s “still going.”

My mother was wired like that “still going” bunny — except her drum didn’t beat to the Energizer Bunny’s predictable rhythm. Hers was a scattered, high-strung, frantic energy with many more beats per second than her day called for.

I, her little tag-along, was like all of the competitor bunnies in the Energizer ads, whose batteries died part way through, while hers were “still going.” But she thought my batteries should run like hers, so she regularly ordered me to “quit whining.”

Eventually, I not only quit whining, I grew into an Energizer Bunny myself. I could never relax until my plate was clean, but my plate was never clean. Once one entrée was off, another came on, each taking too long to finish. Could I ever relax?

Then there were my To Do lists that also kept going and going and going. I had one at work and another at home, then split that one into two, one for the home and another for the kids, then I did the same at work. The lists had been overwhelming, so I had tried to organize them, but now had four lists, all overwhelming.

The more the lists grew, the more my chest, neck, and face flushed a pinkish glow. My heart raced; my nights were sleepless. My doctor prescribed Prozac.

Shelter in Place, Save Lives

Both my marriage and my career were becoming Covid casualties. My husband was romancing another woman by Zoom. Whether it was a word I spoke, a silence I kept, or a face I made, everything was magnified in its power to heal or destroy.

My employer, facing the pandemic budget crisis, and my supervisors, in petty squabbles, put my work into jeopardy. My hours were cut and my full job was on the line. A single misstep could cost me my job.

Meanwhile, the side of our yard reflected my life’s pending calamities. This plot had housed two vegetable gardens and a play sand pit, each bordered with bricks, patio stones, and washed rocks. The smoke from our successive wildfires and our kids, now teens, eased us into negligence. The plot had morphed into a nightmare of broken, buried stones and thigh-high weeds.

We had been saving to hire a landscaper to clear out the bricks, stones, and weeds, and then redesign it. By this time, we had saved $7000. Now, we were ordered to shelter at home and I needed work. Why not hire myself?

It was back-breaking. The weeding, unearthing, shoveling, and raking were never-ending. I thought I’d never reach the rewarding part of laying landscape fabric and returning the treasures I had unburied into a new creation.

The Energizer Bunny within me urged me to finish more quickly. He pointed to the pros who work eight hours a day, five days a week, even in the heat. Why was I such a wimp?

Listen to your body. It speaks for Us.

These were my “whispers of mystery,” the soft, gentle, and profound inner voice that understands what my conditioning does not.

They reminded me of the story of the tortoise and the hare. The hare, like the Energizer Bunny, is a rabbit who keeps going and going and going, quickly bouncing often off his path, seeking short-cuts, and through most of the race, he’s ahead.

 In the fable, the rabbit represents human culture, ever prancing, hopping, and racing into a myriad of distractions. The turtle represents the rhythm of nature, moving slowly, step by step, straight head, taking only the step in front of him, never veering from his path, and keeping a steady pace.

 Be the turtle. You will finish.

I had been living as the Bunny, anxious to cross off all the items on my To Do list, not answering the phone even for friends, worrying over my untidy house, feeling guilty for not volunteering for the kids’ activities, stressed when I did, screaming at repair guys for being late — and that was only at home.

The Energizer Bunny was more insistent at the university. Students had constant needs and administrators asserted never-ending demands, changes, trainings, meetings, and announcements of new problems we the faculty were expected to take on, without complaint or mistake.

Then came Covid. The expectations didn’t change, but the work did, with our own technology and no on-site support. My office and my classroom were in my bedroom.

My inner Bunny was done.

Be the turtle. You will finish.

But everyone mocks the turtle. No one lives like the turtle. He’s bullied, scoffed at, and people laugh at him.

He’s counter-cultural.

True. The turtle’s journey is counter to all that I had been taught. His fable may be well known, but nothing about his lesson fits our culture.

I chuckled that I had tried to teach a turtle-like rhythm to my writing students, even if I hadn’t learned it myself. They would usually decide on a thesis statement and then begin writing, but I told them that would put them on a stationary bicycle. Instead, decide on your research question, research it, and then develop your thesis. That way, you’ll get on a real bicycle that goes places.

And wins the race.

My whispers spoke up, interrupting my thoughts. I, too, had been riding a stationary bicycle, setting so many goals that I had little room for spontaneity or leisure. Yet I still felt I was not getting far.

Do you need to get far?

 I let the stones in my hand drop, took a breath, and sat against the fence. Maybe not. What had I been striving for and why?

Be the turtle. Stride in a race you don’t know you’re in.

 I felt my inner spirit breathing a new rhythm into me. My stone garden was my teacher: move one stone at a time, pull one weed at a time. I built my stone garden as the turtle.

And like the bicycle that goes somewhere, I also built it without a “thesis” at the start. Having vowed to use whatever materials I could unbury in whatever way I could, I didn’t know what the end product would look like.

Photo by the Author of the finished stone garden

I did lose both my marriage and my career. I took some missteps in my marriage, but at work, I was the careful turtle. Another supervisor who had witnessed the drama, emailed me. “YOU did everything right,” hinting that he knew his colleagues, my supervisors, had not.

The lesson in this is that even if we do take each step as careful as the turtle, we might still lose. We might not cross the finish line with everything in tact.

But, we will have won a race we didn’t know we were in. That’s the one that gets us out of the rabbit’s race altogether. We start living counter-cultural. We keep a distance from the frantic bunnies and we stride in peace.

 I grieved what I lost. But what I gained was a heart rate that slowed, a chest that loosened, nights that let me sleep. I’ll take the stride that lets me breathe.

© by Karina.  Please use only with permission and/or a link to this post.