Leading from the Middle

Caption: Cicada as ceramic vase. Unlike the USA where the emergence of the cicadas are viewed by some akin to a plague of locusts, in Provence they herald the lazy days of summer: Il ne fait pas bon de travailler quand la cigale chante, or It?s not good to work when the cicada is singing.

Having sung the summer through,
Cicada found herself quite destitute.
And when the North Wind blew,
Provisions being less than scant,
She crawled on down to neighbor ant
With cries of famine,
Hoping to borrow just a bit of seed
To tide her over till the coming Spring.
"I'll pay of course," she tried to plead,
"Before the month of August,
Both interest and principal.
Come, trust a fellow animal!"
The ant however is no lender;
Lending is the least of all her flaws.
"Could you tell me what you did
On all those hot dry days?"
She asked the borrower.
"Night and day, my pardon to you ants,
I sang, for one and all."
"You sang" I am enthralled!
Now all you have to do is dance."

In the workplace, I'll take the happy cicada over the uncharitable ant. As we know, there are lovable fools and hopeless fools. And we all know "competent jerks" - the exacting ant - who have gotten ahead by crushing other people.
So, while the cicada, the lovable fool, may not be your star employee, he or she, does bring sunshine to a windowless office.

*Source: Fables of La Fontaine. Compiled by Koren G. Christofides and translated by Constantine Christofides and Christopher Carsten. Seattle: University of Washington Press 2006


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Copyright all text John Lubans 2024

 

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