Maybe some fables would help with reality
Like many of you, I have been spending a lot of time during the past week thinking about Aesop’s Fables. If your days have not been spent in deep contemplation of those pithy morality tales from ancient Greece, please keep that information to yourself. I’d rather not shatter my illusions of normalcy.
I blame this literary equivalent of an earworm on the recent run of unseasonably warm weather. Despite living in a northern climate for most of my life, I have never managed to take a cue from the frenetic activity of squirrels and recognize that I should be busy preparing for the coming winter as well. Instead, I am perennially caught by surprise when the first snowfall buries my garden hoses and tomato cages until spring.
This year’s June-in-november weather felt like a second chance and I took the opportunity to batten the hatches before it was too late. Deck furniture was covered, dead plants were composted and the garden hoses were finally put away. I hate to brag about how efficient I was during these waning days of autumn, but I did notice a couple of squirrels watching me and taking notes.
Which is why Aesop’s Fables have been on my mind, specifically, the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper. It’s a story about, not surprisingly, an ant and a grasshopper. The grasshopper, who is fun-loving and cool (not trying to sway your opinion here) spends the summer days playing his fiddle while the ant, who is a buzz-kill (again, keeping it neutral) does nothing all summer but haul food to his anthill. When it gets cold, the grasshopper goes to the ant and asks for some food to get him through the winter and the ant says no and shuts the door in his face.
Apparently Aesop wasn’t a fan of the arts or the social safety net. Sure, it’s important that everyone work together and do their part. But the ant’s selfish, I-told-you so attitude means the grasshopper is not going to live to do whatever it is grasshoppers do in the spring. Even to a kid trying to stay alive in a world without seat belts, bike helmets and outlet covers, this seemed like a particularly harsh way to learn a lesson.
Despite the apparent dangers of enjoying the sunshine while it lasts, I have spent my life firmly in Camp Grasshopper. It was unsettling, then, to suddenly find myself on Team Ant. I tried to remember the moral of the fable and figured it was something like “work, work, work no matter what.” But maybe it was “you will never escape your true nature, unless it’s 2020 and then all bets are off, sucker.” I decided I should go to the source to check it out.
The fables are available for free online through the Library of Congress. Poor Aesop didn’t follow one of his lesser-known morals: “It is best to live long enough for copyright laws to be invented.” According to the website, the lesson of the Ant and the Grasshopper is, “It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.” With those big words, no wonder the moral went over my young head. As an adult, however, I realized Aesop might have been on to something. Perhaps it’s time to stock up on toilet paper again.
As I clicked through other fables, I saw their morals were
equally relevant today. “One falsehood leads to another,” “The tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny,” and
“Do not sacrifice your freedom for the sake of pomp and show” made me wonder whether Aesop was incredibly prescient or else there really is nothing new under the sun. Maybe we aren’t living in extraordinary times after all.
Still, I’d like to think that if Aesop were alive today and living on a cul-de-sac in suburban Athens, he’d come up with a few more fables for our modern times. This time of year would certainly inspire him to write a fable everyone could relate to: The Neighbor and the Leaf Blower, with the moral: “He who leaf blows last has probably been leaf blowing loudest. All day.” And I bet he would have penned a cautionary tale for those harbingers of winter whose pea-sized brains have yet to adapt to the dangers of modern transportation. Entitled The Car and the Squirrel, it would end with the warning: “He who hesitates is squashed.”