Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Never Give Up


“Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?” - Marian Wright Edelman

Some may remember that several weeks ago I tried to save a nest of wasps – the nest was accidentally knocked down by a friend of my son’s; when I found it, I tried propping it up in a corner of the porch to save the babies growing in the chambers, but since I had no way of securing it to the railing, it was blown away by the wind soon after that. I found the nest again, saw that the babies were still moving and put it in a different place in the same area. Each time, the workers went back to tend to it. A few days later, it disappeared.

The workers looked for the nest for a few days, and continued to stay on the ceiling of the porch in the same corner where they had originally built. A week later, I noticed they were working on new cells, and soon a new, smaller nest was built. After their labor of a whole summer was destroyed, they set out to do what they could to keep the colony going. The nest was built and more babies were laid in its chambers.

This time around they were racing against time. With colder weather at the door, their goal was not of creating a big, impressive nest, but of laying enough babies as quickly as possible to ensure that at least one new queen and some workers could make it through the winter and keep the colony going.

When I peeked into the nest yesterday morning, I knew they had achieved their goal. The babies are now big enough to live on their own, and they will likely survive unless they get hit by a premature cold snap. When the workers will lay their tired bodies to sleep, a few weeks from now, they will do so knowing that their purpose was fully met.

Even after the fruit of their hard labor was knocked down three times by unfriendly circumstances, the wasps quickly counted their losses and moved on to plan B. They could have given up but they never did, and when disaster struck, they accepted it for what it was and went eagerly to work to salvage what they could. Their focus was set and they were either going to succeed or die trying. As it turned out, their acceptance and effort were rewarded in the end.

As someone once said, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more wisely.”
Perseverance is a key to the door of the future.