THE TORTOISE & THE QUEST FOR WISDOM

THE TORTOISE & THE QUEST FOR WISDOM

The tortoise was not the strongest creature in the jungle. Nor was he the biggest. And with his stout legs and heavy shell, he definitely wasn’t the fastest. But, despite his physical limitations, the tortoise was cunning. He decided he would be the wisest if he could not be the biggest, fastest, or strongest creature to walk this earth.

However, as the tortoise soon learned, this endeavor required work – and lots of it. Because the only way to be the wisest in the jungle was to collect wisdom from each corner of the world. So, with nothing but his wits and trusty gourd, the tortoise left home in search of adventure. He crossed mountains and rivers and even learned how to climb trees to speak with the birds. Whenever he met someone new, he would ask for a story or morsel of knowledge. Then, he’d pour all that information into his gourd.

Soon, he had to get a second container and a third. Eventually, he had so many gourds to carry that he tied them to a long rope trailing behind him.

It took nearly a year for the tortoise to complete his mission, but after many moons and suns, he celebrated what he had set out to do. The tortoise was not the biggest, fastest, or strongest creature to walk the earth, but it had officially acquired all the wisdom in the world.

 As the was  journey coming to a close, all that was left to do was decide where to store the wisdom. He couldn’t leave it out in the open, for surely bandits would steal it. He couldn’t bury it within the earth because the worms would claim it. And he couldn’t store the wisdom in his house because his house was on his back. The tortoise’s shell was snug and cozy, but there was not enough room to fit the gourds.

The tortoise sighed and looked skyward. While he gazed at the towering trees and the magnificent canopy dancing in the wind, he finally realized the perfect place to store the wisdom. Within the trees.

Like he’d done earlier when collecting wisdom from the birds, the tortoise shimmied up the tallest tree. But when he was halfway to the top, he began to tire. The gourdes were heavy, and as we know, the tortoise was not the strongest of creatures. While he struggled to climb the trunk, a family of monkeys stopped to watch.

The monkeys didn’t know the gourdes were filled with wisdom, so when they saw the tortoise struggling, they offered some advice – instead of delivering an entire lot of gourds in one trip, why not take a single container and make several trips? Or, they offered that when the tortoise shook off their advice, the monkeys could help carry the gourds.

The tortoise scoffed at this suggestion, for there was no way he was letting a family of monkeys put their hands on his wisdom. The tortoise continued to huff and puff as he struggled against the tree, and eventually, he made it into the canopy.

But before he could tie the rope to a branch and thereby secure his wisdom, the rope slipped from his fingers. Every one of the gourds fell back to the earth and broke into a million tiny pieces.

The tortoise was enraged. He lamented his poor luck and cursed the monkeys for distracting him. Such thoughtless creatures, he whispered to himself. They think they know everything, but they have not spent the last year collecting knowledge from each corner of the world as I have!

The tortoise as partially correct. The monkeys were not the most intelligent creatures in the world, but they did know something the tortoise had yet to learn: no matter how hard we tried, no one person could carry all the wisdom in the world.