I’m not sure this title fits the subject of this post, but I like it anyway. This blog will be about a turtles, a story that presented itself to me today, quite inadvertently, quite by accident. Or so it seemed at the time.
My Bagels book, as I call it – From Bagels to Curry – also recounts a turtle story, symbolically depicting an issue I confronted as the passing of my father drew near almost 10 years ago:
As I’m driving home from my office at Ananda Village after completing some quiet catch-up projects, what appears to be a largish stone in the middle of the road begins to move. Very slowly. The tortoise makes his way onto the blacktop road from nearby Turtle Pond. I bring my car to a stop on the gravel shoulder and coax him onto my clipboard to return him to the water’s edge. He looks up at me, turns away, and not once but twice from instinctive fear urinates on my notepapers. My act of heroism may have cost me the notepad, but it probably saved his life. My own life seems to have slowed to a tortoise-crawl.
Fast-forward to the present. Today I was driving back from town after a most delightful acupuncture treatment – or truer to say the delight came after the electric sting of the baby-sized needles to jumpstart my life force. Despite the wise advice not to eat and drive – being not great for the peristalsis, i.e. DUIP, driving under the influence of popcorn – I was eating a bag of the herb-flavored kind for my makeshift lunch.
I’d just turned off Highway 49 onto Tyler Foote Road when there appeared to be an overturned rock slightly off-center in my lane. With no oncoming traffic and a quick swerve, I was able to avoid hitting it. The closer I approached, the clearer it became that the object was a turtle. The midday sun glistened off his shell. It was easy to see where the product “turtle wax” got its name with his shell shining like an impenetrably solid and well polished vehicle.
The two-lane road was vacant. There was no danger in pulling off to the side of the road and running back to relocate him to safer ground. After all, he might not be so lucky with the next driver, or the next!
Funny thing was, as I started sprinting back toward him, he started running to escape being caught. Can you imagine the look on his little winded face, crawling as fast as he could to outrun me? I’m no marathoner but there really was no competition here at all. He barely moved. A snail could’ve left him in the dust. Yet I imagined sweat pouring profusely down his little sloped forehead as he hastened himself forward with all his might to soldier on and outrun me. Our race -with him scrambling like lightning considering that he carried with him a shell developed from his ribs wherever he went – was ludicrous and sorely ill-matched. Needless to say, I overtook him.
I picked him up as he retreated head and limb into his shell. Placing him squarely in a nicely moist meadow, I hoped he would have the sense next time to race away from the road rather than toward it.
I returned to my car, the motor still running, but not to the bag of herbed popcorn. All I could think about was the turtle. The little sprinter had filled me with thoughtfulness about the fragility of life. Don’t we all inhabit some kind of shell, trying to insulate ourselves from the harshness of our trials? And then comes along some big metal vehicle . . .
This is where the post’s title ties in. If we can’t retreat and we can’t hide, then why not dance through life? Precisely as if no one’s watching. Why not shine, like that little turtle? Why not run with all our might toward our goals no matter how uncertain the outcome? Even if we get run over by one test after another – well, then, at least we’ve given it our best.