Writing is a endurance event..
No matter who you read, or who mentors you the one thing that comes through time and time again is that writing is an endurance event. It takes long term planning with short term goals. It takes dedication to put your fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes or more of writing time into a busy day. But on the 26th September 2011 I saw a feat of performance that acted as real inspiration to me and it came from a snail.
My mentor..
The back of my house is an unlikely location for what may be one of the most outstanding feats of endurance I have encountered and certainly one that took my breath away. The walk through my garden takes me through a trellised arch of grape vines which rises to about three metres from the ground, with the leaves and grapes hanging above my head.
On that morning I was looking at the number of bunches hanging above me which I hadn't noticed before and something caught my attention on one of the leaves above my head. I guess right now, your wondering how this ties in with endurance? I saw a snail hanging onto a leaf slowly eating it's way across the "track." It's shell wasn't that big and it barely covered the size of a thumb nail, but there it was three metres off the ground.
How did it get there?
How did the snail, carrying it's own house get there?
There was a small trail at the foot of one the post holding this part of the trellis up, but who's to say it was laid by this particular snail. As a traveller, as someone with a touch of the adventurer inside me am I wrong to give this hero the benefit of the doubt. What guts and fortitude it must have taken to begin that climb. What were the dangers of doing a night climb, or was it undertaken over two or three days? I smiled and passed on by. But I had that little thought to myself that success comes from "keeping going", that sometimes reaching the means of feeding yourself takes great endurance and single mindedness.
What do you think?
And if you have any ideas on how it may have got there apart from climbing, I'd love to hear from you at www.balancehealth-fitness.co.uk
@ErnieBalance on twitter