Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster. They decided to settle the argument with a race. They agreed on a route and started off the race. The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time. Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise, he thought he'd sit under a tree for some time and relax before continuing the race. He sat under the tree and soon fell asleep. The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ. The hare woke up and realized that he'd lost the race. The moral – “Slow and steady wins the race.” This is the version of the story that we've all grown up with.
THE STORY DOESN'T END HERE…
The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some soul searching. He realized that he'd lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there's no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race. The tortoise agreed. This time, the hare went all out and ran without
stopping from start to finish. He won by several miles. The moral – “Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady. It's good to be slow and steady; but it's better to be fast and reliable.”
THE STORY DOESN'T END HERE…
The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realized that there's no way it can beat the hare in a race the way it was currently formatted. It thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different route. The hare agreed. They started off. In keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at top speed until he came to a broad river. The finishing line was a couple of kilometres on the other side of the river. The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race. The moral – “First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit your core competency.”
THE STORY STILL HASN'T ENDED…
The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become pretty good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realized that the last race could have been run much better. So they decided to do the last race again, but to run as a team this time. They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they'd felt earlier. The moral – “It's good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless you're able to work in a team and harness each other's core competencies, you'll always perform below par because there will always be situations at which you'll do poorly and someone else does well.”
Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person
with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership. Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure. The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard as he could. In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work harder and put in more effort. Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different. And sometimes it is appropriate to do both. The hare and the tortoise also learnt another vital lesson. When we stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we perform far better.
Endurance…how would one define it? Is it the ability to exert oneself for a long period of time? Is it the ability to keep fighting? Can it only surface in times of trouble?
It is known that humans have always had that quality in them – of not giving in, of not giving up, of keeping the battle going. I guess the one true reason why this virtue is omnipresent, is because of the uncertainty of the result. If you don’t already know that you are going to lose, you are very much in the game. You keep fighting; keep giving it your best shot…time and again.
One might easily confuse endurance with strength. Strength can be physical (i.e. the ability to exert force on physical objects using muscles) or mental (i.e. the ability to confront fear, pain, risk/danger, uncertainty, or intimidation…also known as Fortitude). But endurance, I believe, has more to do with external circumstances than with internal qualities. The critical factor to really ‘test your endurance’ is the presence of an opposing force, whose magnitude is such that it makes you leave your zone of comfort and surpass yourself. In such situations, one of three things might happen:
1. You lose, but you realise that you didn’t give it your best
2. You lose, but you realise that you gave it your best
3. You win
Moving from point 1 to point 3, takes time and conscious effort in that direction. Learning to get up once you fall is the point I am trying to make here. And doing that time and again, builds endurance. The following words of Douglas Mallock have always inspired me:
The tree that never had to fight,
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out on the open plain,
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king,
But lived and died a scrawny thing.
The man who never had to toil,
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share,
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man,
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow in ease,
The stronger the wind, the stronger trees
The farther sky, the greater the length
The more the storm, the more the strength,
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In tree and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
This is the common law of life.
