Obligation to struggle

A  short story by Chinua Achebe

The leopard meets the tortoise on a lonely stretch of road. The leopard has been trying to catch the tortoise for a long time. The tortoise is a trickster, and so obviously has been escaping. And then on this day the leopard finally catches up with him and says, ah-ha. You know, now I've got you. Prepare to die.

And tortoise says to leopard: Can I ask you one last favor? And the leopard says, yes, why not? And tortoise says: Give me a short time to prepare myself for death. And the leopard looked around, said: I don't see why not. Yes, go ahead. But then instead of standing still and thinking, as the leopard had expected, the tortoise began to dig and scatter sand all over the road, you know, throwing sand in all directions with his hands and feet.

And the leopard says: What's going on? Why are you doing that? And the tortoise says: I'm doing this because after I am dead, I want anyone passing by this spot and seeing all this sign of struggle on the road to say: A man and his match struggled here.

And the moral of this is the importance of struggle, that we cannot - no one is going to guarantee us the outcome. Nobody's going to say if you struggle, you will succeed. It would be too simple. But even if we are not sure how it is going to end, what success will attend our enterprise, we still have this obligation to struggle.

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