It's apt that on the day I am due to collect my citizenship renunciation slip, this famous malay phrase comes to mind. You can guess what it refers to from the picture below.
photo credit: gambar-ularcobra
Squirrels are uber athletes. This specimen above even had a fruit in its mouth as it attempted a leap from one tree branch to another and they do this countless times a day, with supreme confidence. And they almost always nail their landings.
Until they don't. And hence the phrase that means "as clever as the squirrel jumps, eventually it falls to the ground". As someone who likes data, this statement is tautological. Of course, if you jump as many times as the squirrel does, there will be that one occasion it falls. That said, I have never seen one fall. Ever. And given I have taken over 200 walks in parks the past 1.5 years and seen many squirrels (maybe 500 of them), I have never seen one fall. Until yesterday.
From an incredible height, it fell onto the paved jogging/cycling track in Bishan Park. Despite its luxurious fur lining, I could even hear the thud as it hit the ground. There it remained motionless for about 5 seconds (out of shock,probably, M says) and then as it sensed a bicycle coming its way, it flipped itself over and ran up a nearby tree.
It struck me that the Malay idiom is incomplete. It isn't about the falling. It's about the getting up again.
And this squirrel will likely have its confidence well intact, and probably attempt that great leap again, and naturally without harnesses or safety nets.
I write this just as the Tokyo Olympics gets underway. Deferred by a year due to COVID19, the human uber-athletes of the work will now start to showcase how far, how fast and how high they can perform. Some of them will fall too. The human spirit cannot be any less than the squirrels'. They will pick themselves up and run, jump and score again. Another saying comes to mind, "you don't score any goals from the kicks you don't take".
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