The Assiduity of an Iguana

 

assiduity - noun - close attention to what one is doing (Google)

I am always quite amazed at what one can learn from creatures great and small. At the start of this week, I found myself trying to recover from the flu (round two for me inside of six months: shoulda, woulda, coulda gotten the flu shot) in Aruba of all places. As I lay on a chaise lounge chair in my five-dollar Primark black bikini, trying to escape a sunburn under the fronds of a palmetto adjacent to the waterfalls of the hotel's pool, an iguana that couldn't have cared less about me was attempting to climb the trunk of the palm tree. His assiduity was impressive. Although distrustful he would occasionally look over at me to ensure I wasn't up to something egregious, his focus was on getting to the top of the tree. Unfortunately, just when he thought he'd made progress, he would slip down to the starting point. At one point, he gave up altogether and headed for the falls so that at one point all that could be seen of him was his long tail, painted with green and black scales. But since he kept coming back and trying again and again, I figured that there must have been a reason. I looked up into the tree and saw his motivation: his Iguana mate dangling precariously, seductively from one of the palm fronds. Sex sells. I figured Mr. Iguana would keep making repeated tries to reach his goal, so I decided to give him and her some privacy and made a beeline to my room. 

What can be learned from this modern-day parable, starring his and her iguanas is that the world functions well on tenacity. All creatures are motivated to behave one way or the other, and many of us in the human and animal kingdoms have the same wants and needs that we are willing to work for patiently or impatiently. Ultimately, we all do what we do to survive and to maintain a

balance between pleasure and pain.

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