Many years ago, there was a youth. The youth asked a question of his elder, and the elder thought about it.
“I do not know the answer to your question,” he said. “But my father’s father was told a fable by his father’s father that may help you deal with it. Would you like to hear it?”
“No,” said the youth.
“Good,” said the elder, “it is called “the Mantis and the Spider.” Now you sit down right there and listen up…”
One day, far away and long ago, a mantis came across a spider in his web. This is all metaphorical, so don’t get too worried about talking animals and all of that. It’s a metaphor.
“Good day,” said the mantis.
“Guess so,” said the spider.
“How is there a doubt in your mind?” said the mantis. “The sun shines bright, without rain to trouble us. The little insects which we both feed upon are abundant and delicious. Truly, it is indeed a good day!”
“Always room for more of a bad thing in any good thing,” said the spider.
“Pessimism, pessimism,” chided the mantis. “Now tell me, what good will that attitude do you? It saps your life of joy and throws away the chance for relaxation, leaves you a nervous juddering wreck! Your nerves will be shot, your eyes will grow dim and fearful, you’ll be dead before you even have the chance to be cannibalized while mating! Put aside your weary doubts and feel the refreshment of happiness.”
“If you always expect the worst, if you’re ever surprised it’s pleasant,” said the spider. “That’s all the happiness I need and more. Why’ve you got the time to go around bossing me on how cheerful I sound, eh? Don’t you have something better to do?”
“I am fed and I am looking for a mate at present, tracking for pheromones left, right, and center. What more is there for me to do?”
“Pshaw,” said the spider. “That’s barely anything. You have too much time on your hands.”
He meant claws, okay? Some idioms don’t translate too well across species.
“Excuse me?” said the mantis.
“That’s nothing, what you’re doing. Everything can do that much, and most of us do more. Look at me, I’m a hundred times busier than you are. That’s why I don’t have the time to go popping off on how danged pretty the sunshine is this morning: I’m doing things.”
“I’m hunting and searching for a mate right this second, and most of us do no less,” said the mantis, who was now getting annoyed.
“Oh sure, you’re hunting alright,” said the spider. “The problem is that you just aren’t willing to put any real effort into it.”
The mantis bristled. It was a natural thing for it to do, being so thin and sharp. At least half of its existence was composed of automatic bristling. “No real effort? Do you have any idea how long I can stand here, in one spot, waiting for a single little tiddly piece of prey? Not a single twitch, not a jot of a snippet of an ounce of a sound, all for hours on end until prey comes. And then I wait more, and more, and more still, and only at the very moment of success, THEN do I strike. Are you telling me that all of that takes no real effort?”
“Oh, it’s effort,” said the spider. It scratched its leg with one of its other legs. “But it’s not REAL effort.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Listen, I hold still,” said the spider. “I keep close and quiet. I can do that fine. But first, I have do real work. I have to build a web, and build it strong, and build it in the right spot at the right time. Got to make sure the breeze won’t rip it, got to make sure the rain won’t spill all down it and wash me out. That’s planning, that’s real effort. Then I’ve got to get down to nuts and bolts and brother-bug, you haven’t seen effort ’till you’ve seen the effort that goes into web building. I have to plan and measure by bodylengths and spin all around ’till I’m blue in the face and red in the spinnerets. Then it’s not over, oh no it isn’t. I’ve got to repair it after every catch, and every meal’s a struggle to wrap it all up before it gets away. THAT’S real effort.”
“Real effort?” said the mantis. “Now look here! I’ve tolerated your tone thus far, but this tripe is simply too much to bear. For your information, each day I must find a good spot to hunt and eat. YOU on the other hand need simply sit atop your spinnerets – which, for your information, are not red in the slightest but are rather of more-than-ample-dimensions – and wait for your dinner to fly into your mouth. Do you think these wings are for show? Do you think that my lanky posture is that of a frame that gives way under the slightest bit of travel? May I ask, oh One of Great Effort, when was the last time you had to subdue prey that wasn’t safely entangled in your silk? Every meal I take must be earned, and I eat my food as tough as can be: bite by bite! None of this faffabout liquification followed by suckling like an infant mammal at its mater’s teat, no sir, not for me! You are a lazy sod, an indolent cob, a selfish attercop without a bite of venom in his fangs but rather poison atop his tongue for those who work harder than he dreams to survive.”
The tongue thing is just another idiom. Pay it no mind.
The spider raised himself up on his web, swollen with indignation. “Indolent cob, is it now?” he hissed, all those hairy little needles on his body rubbing on each other to make a sound like cockroach hell. “Speaks the berk who’s too stupid to mate without getting his head chomped off and taken for his lady’s lunch, that’s who’s talking to me about indolence and laziness with as many pretty words as he pleases!”
“And you’re one to speak of mates that dine on one’s own flesh, aren’t you, my little arachnid friend?” said the mantis, waving his long thin arms around in a somewhat alarming manner.
“That’s for the widows, and I’m no widow, you pompous pinhead! Give me an excuse and I’ll silk your head and have it off before your pretty little friends get a crack at it!”
“With you I won’t have the head off, oh no no no,” whispered the mantis. “You’re too small to be a serious struggle. I’ll just eat you live. Bite by bite. As is only proper.”
They sat there for a minute, tense as lightning.
An antenna twitched. A mandible tweaked.
The breeze let another carefree gust blow through the web, making it whistle at a range just barely too high-pitched for any ear on earth to hear. Startled, the two little invertebrates looked up into the sky and saw nothing above them but that big blue wildness and its moving heat.
“Well, it’s not exactly a bad day, is it?” said the spider.
“Quite nice,” said the mantis.
They looked back down, at each other. Neither was sure what to say next.
Then a very large booted foot tumbled down from the sky, the breeze playing at its dangling shoelaces, and squashed the mantis flat. As it uprooted itself for the next stride it tore a hole clean through the spider’s web, dooming him to face a lingering death of starvation some two days later.
“Is there a moral to this fable that will help answer my question?” asked the youth.
The elder snored, like a gentle breeze.
The youth wandered away, disgruntled, and thought up his own answer. Much as it had been for the previous six generations, whether or not that had been the intended result remained entirely opaque.