The tortoise and the hare

and telling a new story

(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. It’s unedited, and today features my delightfully croaky voice! If you like/need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it regardless!)

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You’ve probably heard the fable of the two wolves that live inside each of us (one is good and one is bad and every day we must decide which one to feed), and no doubt you’re familiar with the story of the tortoise and the hare.

I’ve found myself thinking about both a lot over the years, drawn to the lessons they offer about the power of choice and valuing the road less travelled.

And while they’ve definitely been helpful on my never-ending quest to understand slow living and why I need it so much, like most fables, they’re too simplistic to apply to real life, unable to contain the multitudes that we all hold within ourselves. But recently, while I was washing the dishes (where I get so many of my ideas) I found myself wondering what might happen if I took elements of both stories and combined them, to create a mash-up fable all of my own.

(Yes, I do weird things like this for fun.)

Photo by Luca Ambrosi on Unsplash

I do have two animals inside of me, but they’re not wolves. Instead, one is the fast-paced hare, and the other is the dear, plodding tortoise.

The hare represents speed and unbridled enthusiasm and a desire to have and do and be everything, all at once, while the tortoise is thoughtfulness and slow determination, the antithesis of distraction.

The question my mash-up fable asks, is which animal will I feed today? The hare? Or the tortoise?

Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t name this little corner of the internet after the tortoise because it’s my patronus, my truest form, or the animal inside me that I relate best to, but because it’s the one I need to nurture more. The one I need to feed.

And that’s because my default mode is the hare. I can be impatient and spontaneous and reactive. I have a million ideas at any given moment and some days am cocky enough to think that I should try to do as many of them as possible – at the same time. I get caught out and tangled up and overwhelmed. I say yes to too many things, make quick-fire (knee-jerk?) decisions and navigate life using my gut instinct. Sometimes, confusingly, these traits work out well for me, so the temptation is to just keep feeding the hare. Little handfuls of juicy lettuce and grass and whatever else hares eat. And if relying on the hare leads to burnout sometimes, well, that’s just the cost of modern life. Right?

Right.

Except that after years of experimenting with and exploring slow living, I know, deep in my bones, the dawdling tortoise offers so much amidst all the racing. The tortoise pays close attention and provides a certain kind of single-mindedness. It reels in distractability and finds enoughness and contentment in imperfect efforts. The tortoise knows what it wants and why, and what’s more, it knows who it is – which is very much not the hare. And it turns out the tortoise also likes to eat little handfuls of juicy lettuce and grass.

So what to do? Which animal to feed? Which part of myself do I want or need to nourish more? And why?  

With my hands in the soapy water, I realised what was wrong with the old fables, and what was wrong with my new one. They’re binary. Good wolf or bad wolf; tortoise or hare: choose one. Follow one. Feed one.

But humans aren’t binary. We don’t need to be all of one and none of the other.

The problem was that I still saw myself as having to choose between the tortoise or the hare, rather than simply being the person who cares for them both.

The somewhere-in-the-middle truth is that I love the hare, and I love the tortoise. I spend more time feeding my tortoise these days, but not necessarily because I want her to win every race and plod her way to self-righteous victory (and she can be a little self-righteous), but because if the world is geared to hares, and I’m geared to hare-ness, then I need my tortoise to help balance things out.

Sometimes I just wish she’d be a little faster about it, you know?

Photo by Sindy Strife on Unsplash

All of this to say something I’ve probably already said before: I write about and explore slow living not because I am good at it, but because I need it so much. And while that messiness doesn’t make for a great fable, I do think it’s a pretty common, very human experience.

After reading all your incredible, generous comments on last week’s post, I’m even more convinced that we’re all just a messy combination of tortoise and hare, tossing handfuls of greens their way each day, hoping they don’t start fighting each other.

So this weekend, here’s to looking after our tortoise and our hare.
Brooke xx

P.S. I really was blown away by the introductions so many of you left on last week’s letter and just want you to know that I’m getting around to replying to each and every one of them (slowly, slowly). Thank you times a million for being here, for introducing yourselves, for sharing. I may not yet know what community is, but we’ve made a wonderful start.

And P.P.S. I know I said I’d be posting on Thursdays from now on, but, well, I forgot this week. It’ll probably start next week…?

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