The oak one day addressed the reed: “Your lot’s a hard one; nature’s not been kind to you, for whom a wren’s a heavy burden, and whose head is bowed beneath the gentlest breeze that ever poppled water’s surface. I, conversely, hold my head as firmly high as mountains theirs, with scorn defying storms as easily as shrugging sunbeams off. You would’ve suffered less if you’d been born beneath my sheltering shade; instead, you stand on marshy, windswept ground. Yes, nature’s been unjust to you, my friend.”
The reed replied, “Your pity does you credit, but’s misplaced. The winds are less fierce foes to me than you. I bend, and do not break. You have, thus far, withstood their direful blows tenaciously; the end however’s not been written yet.”
At these prophetic words, the north wind loosed its terriblest, most violent gust.
The oak held tight; the reed was bent.
The wind’s raw rage redoubled, till, at last, the mighty oak—that column holding up the sky and down the earth; that sun-drunk lung that gives the Earth its breath; that fountain spraying heaven with unseen exhaust—was finally uprooted.
Stiffness exacerbates life’s brevity. Plasticity promotes longevity.