a story on sour grapes

Lessons from children’s literature are many a times applicable to the lives of many.

Consider one of Aesop’s fable, ‘The Fox and the Grapes’.

The short story is about a fox who sees juicy grapes hanging from a vine and decides to retrieve them. No matter how he jumped, the grapes were out of reach.

Finally the fox concluded that those grapes must be sour and walks away.

The moral of the story is that there are many who pretend to despise and belittle what is beyond their reach.

There are two lessons here, one negative, the other positive.

The negative is how one makes excuses when we fail to achieve one’s goals. One tells himself that the goal wasn’t worth the effort.

The positive lesson is one we ae familiar with, progressive overload. Imagine the fox, instead of giving up, trained for a higher vertical jump with the goal of reaching the next bunch of grapes he encountered.

Imagine you, choosing to work on the skills to help achieve your goals, without giving up when the going gets tough.

Anything worth having, takes time. The most important things in life take time, effort, and persistence.

You get incrementally better over time, with a combination of breakthroughs, plateaus, and setbacks. You will get there if you do not give yourself the permission to quit.