The Dancing Tortoise

Dear readers, I’ve been away for a bit working on some new pieces. If you missed it, here’s an update about the changes at Inner Workings in the coming year! Tldr: I will publish works of art when they are ready. I will not publish because it’s Wednesday. You can expect fewer, more worked-through essays, my little attempts to access truth and beauty. This is the type of writing I love to do, and with this essay here, I feel like I’ve returned home.

I hope you enjoy it and it sparks a thought. More to come.

❤️ Rachel

Art by Stephanie Davidson

We adore quick wins these days: the kid on Youtube who goes viral and becomes an overnight sensation, the tech startup that goes from zero to unicorn in a year, the miracle makeover. At this point, the story of the tortoise and the hare is passé, and who really reads this to their kids anymore—I never have. We might as well rewrite the thing: the tortoise and the hare challenged each other to a race. The boastful hare ran quickly and the humble tortoise plodded along slowly. The hare won. Not particularly inspiring, but it’s more realistic.

The story of the tortoise and the hare appears all over the world, recognizable but distinct. In the Zulu telling, the tortoise races an antelope on the savannah, and the antelope stops to graze, overconfident in her win. We know what happens then. In the Mexican version, Tio Tortuga devises a plot before the race begins: he gets his relatives to pose as him all along the race track, tricking Tio Conejo into thinking that Tortuga is ahead of him all along. At the end of the race, Conejo sees that Tortuga has already crossed the finish line—in fact it’s another Tortuga relative. This story celebrates cunning and teamwork, and once again demonstrates that the overconfidence of the Conejo leads to ruin. 

At one point in history, everyone everywhere agreed that overconfidence was bad. How quaint this seems now, when overconfidence is such an asset. 

Of course, none of these animals are female in the original telling. Women, in the era when we still made up fables, were obviously neither fast nor slow but back in the den sitting on the babies. So it’s tempting to conclude that nothing about this story stands anymore. We might as well change the whole thing to suit our current needs. The turtle is a woman and the hare wins by running fast. Ok? Done.

*

I run slowly, I always have. I run for pleasure, even though I don’t like it. I run because it’s an easy way to get exercise with little time and no equipment. I run because it’s efficient, but I do it slowly, and I do it for fun, but I don’t like it. Sometimes people make no sense.

My problem is: when someone passes me, I always feel beaten. Even though I’m not racing, and I run only for fun. This is the power of the race framework: running occurs in races; if I’m running, then I am in a race. 

School was a race. My first job was a race. I started a company and continued racing there. I went on a winning streak, showered with ribbons and medals. Very rarely in the first thirty years of my life, however, did I ask: what race is this that I am in? Is it one worth winning? Is it even a race?

The tortoise won only bragging rights in the end, and recall that we aren’t supposed to brag per the embedded ethics of the story. The whole thing falls apart when you consider this detail: the tortoise won nothing useful. This suggests that it wasn’t worth running the race at all, win or lose, when there were so many other things she could have done that day.

These days, even trying to do nothing can become a race. One can be so good at doing nothing that she can sit for two hours without a single thought entering her mind. I know that it is possible for meditation to be something other than yet another type of race, but what I see is people bragging on the internet about meditation streaks. 

Haven’t I heard the word “streak” somewhere before? Regarding the hare and the race and the speed at which he ran? Bragging was the trait we were trying to warn against, when the cocky hare lost the race.

*

Now I am sitting on my babies like the all girl turtles and hares in the original story (implied), and I’m unsurprised that there were no lady entrants in the race. I mean, how could I possibly simultaneously sit on the babies and run? Fables are supposed to lay bare the basic truths and here is one: I physically cannot do both. And why even try when, at the end of the day, the reward is to brag about my win, which I’m not supposed to do? I would obviously choose to sit this whole thing out.

But it’s hard to sit out the race these days, when winning races is such a common armature for self worth. Who is the hare even, at the end of the story, if she can no longer call herself a race winner? What tagline would she even put on LinkedIn? How would she even answer the question at dinner parties, “what do you do?” Can she even call herself a hare anymore? The answer is: yes, she can, she just needs to update her personal brand and overhaul her website. 

The story should actually be told this way to my kids entering the current cultural context: three hares challenged each other to a race. The first hare thought he might be able to win and trained really hard (sucker!). The second hare posted boldly on social media, “I will win!” The third hare created an online course on how to be the ultimate winner in just one week of training, taught by a hare who has done it himself. The winner, of course, was the third: the loudest, most confident hare. The turtle, meanwhile, was smoking weed in his parents’ basement.

This is why it becomes so complicated to be a parent today: we’ve broken so hard with age-old wisdom, there are no simple truths left. I would love to teach my kids what Aesop’s original fable was supposed to teach: that if you’re steady and humble and smart, even if you’re slow, you win. If you’re overconfident, braggadocios and impatient, you lose. 

But it’s not true. Look at recent presidents. So what’s my plan, lie?

*

I hate racing but am addicted to it. This is why I force myself to jog slowly and aimlessly and without an agenda, so that I don’t accidentally start racing. These days, I have to actively keep myself out of the professional race so that I don’t make myself miserable trying to win. Given this, do I even want my kids in the race, as defined? Do I want them trying to win, when winning has become so degraded? Not really. But on the other hand, would I actively keep them out of the race? No, I wouldn’t.

In my ideal version of the story, a tortoise and a hare challenge each other to a race, but before the race even begins, they realize they have a whole bunch of shared interests and could really help the local community if they put their heads together and organize a community event—two animal heads with different backgrounds and skills are better than one!—so they forget the race altogether and get to work planning. Who is the winner? Everybody! 

It’s not as snappy as the original. Collaborative work usually takes time. It’s not an overnight win. No one becomes suddenly rich or famous. Usually there are fumbles, tension, errors. Lots of compromise. The first version doesn’t go perfectly. But if the players are patient, flexible, and open-minded, then it’s possible to make magic happen. The cooperative long game accommodates people other than fast runners, like people who fall ill, or have no legs, or are sitting on babies. This is a concept that I could proudly teach my kids. But it’s not sexy. It’s kind of subtle, nuanced. Not well-loved qualities these days.

I will not fool myself: my kids will run whatever races they choose to run, just like I have. My input will probably be outmatched by the influence of the rest of the world, over which I have no control. All I’m trying to do is pick a story to tell: one that’s grounded in strong values, one that’s inspiring but not misleading. Childhood is the time to dream big, and I’m determined not snuff out dreams with cynicism about the race. I just want to make sure they know that there are many wonderful dream options that are not some form of race-winning.

Honestly, I’d like to convince myself of that, too.

*

The tortoise and the hare bring their kids to watch a race. They carry along a basket of snacks and a boom box. When the music starts, one of the little tortoises starts dancing. Then a little hare starts dancing. Then the mama tortoise and the mama hare, giggling, break out in song and dance. The runners in the race slow down as they pass, noticing the joyful scene. Soon, one of the runners veers off the race track and and makes her way over the grass to join the dance, twirling and jumping. One by one the other runners join. Some of them have finished the race and some haven’t, but no one remembers the results amidst the elation of the growing intergenerational dance party. 

Red-faced and laughing, the little tortoise and the little hare hold hands and swing each other around and around and around, singing at the top of their lungs, dizzy with joy, adults clapping and cheering, shrieks of delight echoing into the sky. The sounds of love reach all the way up to the moon, waking her from her slumber and putting a soft smile on her face.