Nature has many lessons for us.
Take for instance the lesson we learned on our family vacation to Yellowstone National Park a couple of years ago.
For this story, it is important to know what a pika is – a small mammal, larger than a mouse but is a species related closer to a rabbit.
(Images of the pika free from pixabay.com)
The main roads through Yellowstone are two-lane affairs. Backups occur frequently, particularly in certain area because of bison and elk. Often enough, however, you’ll have a car behind you and in front of you and while not going fast, there will be decent movement and progression.
What happened takes so much longer to explain that the time it took to actually happen.
So there we were, on the two-lane road, driving through Yellowstone, admiring the scenery. The car in front of us is ahead by a couple of car lengths, so we see this very clearly. a pika is on the side of the road and attempts to cross. Somehow, miraculously, it jumps into the road and manages to squeeze between the front and rear tires and is under the car in front of us.
Unfortunately, it then decides to turn back. That wasn’t the problem.
It was upon reconsidering that decision and attempting once again to cross the road that the pika managed to not avoid the tire of the car in front of us.
We weren’t moving too fast so we saw the whole thing in what felt like slow motion but in reality it took less than two seconds.
The lesson here is to commit. Whatever you’re going to do, just do it, even if it is the wrong choice. The pika would have survived if it stuck to its initial decision to cross the road, or even if it had stuck with its initial reconsideration of that action. By second guessing itself the pika doomed itself. Don’t be the pika.