‘Slow and steady’ will win you zero races

In the world of sayings, I don’t know if “Slow and steady wins the race” is the most famous, but it’s definitely close. At the very least, I feel comfortable saying it’s the most famous among those that are completely and utterly false.

You know the story. A tortoise and a hare have a race. The hare gets out to a huge, unfathomable lead, because of course a hare is fast and a tortoise is slow. The tortoise plods along. The hare gets out to such a big lead that he stops short of the finish for a nap. The nap lasts so long that the tortoise passes the hare and wins.

How on earth did that become slow and steady wins the race? The moral of that story is (a) don’t get cocky, or (b) don’t be a freaking moron. Maybe, maybe, if you want a tortoise-centric moral, it’s “don’t give up,” but even at that it’s really “don’t give up because someone who might be better than you at a thing might be irredeemably stupid.”

I’m a heavy dude and have been my entire life. Even at that, I’ve always had pretty good stamina. In other words, I don’t run fast and never have, but I can go at my slow speed for-freaking-ever. There are fewer entities on this planet who better exemplify “slow and steady” than your good buddy DK. And trust me when I tell you that I’m not out here winning many races.

The hare by all rights should have won the race. Because of course he’s better at all the components that go into being good at a race. Tell someone that being slow and steady will win a race is just lying to them, because there aren’t many examples of a race (literal or metaphorical) where the one way out in front will just stop racing a few feet shy of the end out of cockiness.

I’m not saying there isn’t a lesson in the tale of the Tortoise and the Hare! There is. It just isn’t the one we’ve spent our entire lives having drilled into our skulls.