From the donkeys of change to the squirrels of obstacles (this post), I’m giving Aesop a hare for his tortoise. Whatever that means.

The moral of both fables, donkey and squirrel, is simply this. Don’t let mere lines on your path trip you short of your goals.

Remember that line in the sand you used to draw as a kid? “Step over this line and I’ll biff you.” And if the other kid was bigger and dared to put his foot over the line, then you simply drew a new line and said firmly, “Step over this line and I’ll bop you.”

Sooner or later, you had to biff up or back down. You had to make your stand in the sand.

Newspaper columnist Ralph Whitlock once wrote of a squirrel confronted by the yellow line painted on a road. Two mornings in a row, the squirrel came down a tree and approached the line, hesitated, turned back and disappeared up the tree. On the third morning, he went through the same routine, except this time he backed away from the line, charged forward and launched himself over the line.

Yes, indeed, obstacles are often of our own making or interpretation. Mere lines in the sand or paint on our path.

Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.