Aesop’s fable of “The Tortoise and The Hare” involves two critters who decide to have a race. The story is over 2,000 years old, but still as lively as ever. The young hare (or rabbit) taunts the old tortoise (or turtle) for moving in a way that is so agonizingly slow (from the hare’s perspective). The tortoise, on the other hand, rolls his eyes at the hare’s seemingly random and wasteful use of his abundant (but not limitless) energy.
They each believe in their own way of living, so much so, that they agree to a ‘running’ race across the field. Hare is over-confident, and sprints this way that, cartwheeling and showing off, literally running rings around his competitor, until he decides to lie down and have a nap to exaggerate how easy it will be for him to win. Tortoise, meanwhile, keeps plodding. As you well know, all hare’s unnecessary carry-on has left him more tired than he realized and he falls into a deep, deep sleep, and only wakes in time to see the old-plodder cross the finishing line.
“Slow and steady wins the race” is the ancient moral of the story.
It’s so old and obvious, that it almost feels cringey. But, as an old(ish)-plodder myself, I can assure you that there’s a lot of truth in the saying – especially when it comes to living with chronic pain, OR your healing journey. There are rarely any ‘quick fixes’ when it comes to minimizing pain. That’s not to say that you won’t feel instantly better when you take a tablet, get a massage, or have a good cry. You will. It’s just that the relief might not be long-lasting.
Real change is deeper… and… slower.
I’ve lived most of my life as an uppity-hoppity-hustley-funny-bunny. I was not so arrogant as the hare in the Aesop’s fable, but I was certainly not paying attention to how I used my time and energy. Eventually I began to “run myself ragged”. When I finally crashed – I crashed hard. Once I was sick with chronic migraine, I woke each morning from my slumber with a pain in my migraine-eye and a sense of shock that I was a healthcare ‘loser’ – life was going on without me, and I was getting left behind.
It wasn’t all bad news, however, because one day I switched characters. I decided to be the tortoise instead of the hare. I began to get up and out of bed slowly, and slowly plod my way through the days no matter how hard it was, slowly but surely making my way towards better health. I’m not going to lie, improvements DID start happening immediately after I set my mind to it, but the real, deep changes to my health and wellbeing took weeks and months (and are still ongoing).
There is a similar but different narrative that I also love. It might not be quite so ancient, but is still very old: “festina lente”. It is Latin for ‘make haste slowly’. There are a couple of different readings of the saying that I have come across. One is that you take your time to decide what to do or where to go, then you hustle to make it happen. It’s a sort of ‘measure twice – cut once’ ideology. The other reading seems to be that whatever you do, you do it with a combination of slow consideration and great energy. This form of the reading is more like a hybrid approach that takes the best of the tortoise AND the hare – wisdom AND vitality – and combines them into a mystical ‘tare’ or a ‘hortise’ creature… or a ‘tabbit’ / ‘rurtle’.
I asked AI to make me just such a creature and this is what I got:
But AI isn’t the first to create hybrid fantasies of this sort of careful, but rapid, progress. Here are just some of the wonderful artworks I found doing a google search online:
Today, there are some cool tattoos that replicate the idea… and I’m pretty tempted… or maybe I could just sew it into a cross-stitch… which still uses a needle but would be a whole lot less painful… and less permanent!
But there’s one more version of this theme I want to point out: the idea of “unhurrying”. In this relentlessly fast-paced world that we find ourselves in, there is always something that is constantly pulling on our attention, and pushing for instant responses (such as those ASAPy bosses I recently wrote about). It can be hard not to get swept up in the whirlwind of it all. The only way to survive is to join the rat-race (which feels normal and sane – until it doesn’t) or run your own race like old-plodder-tortoise.
Forget “hurry UP” and “un-hurry the heck DOWN” so that you make it through the upcoming weeks and months and years without crashing into burn-out or chronic overwhelm.
So, next time you feel a little bit demoralized that you’re not getting better faster, ask yourself if you’re heading in the right direction that best suits YOU. If you are – then keep going. It’s not a race, it’s a journey, and if you’re getting better all the time, then you’re making admirable progress. Moreover, the changes that you are making are more likely to last you a life-time… how cool is that!
Keep travelling friends, slow but steady, and mindfully (of course).
Take care taking care, Linda xox
The Mindful Migraine 
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