The Ant and the Chrysalis
Aesop's Fables · 1 min read
An industrious ant, hurrying past on one of her endless daily trips gathering food for the colony, paused near a motionless chrysalis hanging still and lifeless-looking from a low branch. "How sad," the ant remarked, "to hang there doing absolutely nothing useful while the rest of us work tirelessly all day. What a wasted, lazy existence."
The chrysalis said nothing in reply, remaining exactly as motionless as before, giving the ant no reason to reconsider her judgment as she continued on her busy way, satisfied in her assessment of a creature that appeared, by every visible measure she could observe, to be doing nothing productive at all.
Some days later, hurrying past the very same spot on yet another errand, the ant was startled to see a magnificent butterfly emerging slowly from the same chrysalis she had dismissed as wasted and lazy, unfurling brilliant wings and lifting gracefully into the air before her astonished eyes. The transformation that had produced this beautiful creature had, in fact, been happening the entire time inside that motionless shell — real, essential work simply invisible from the outside, mistaken for idleness only because the ant had no way to see what was actually occurring beneath the still surface. She never again assumed that stillness meant nothing important was happening within it.
Moral of the story
Real, essential work can be entirely invisible from the outside, and is easily mistaken for idleness by someone who can't see beneath the surface.