A sobering story: John Henry Fabre, a legendary French naturalist, once inducted an unusual and revealing experiment with some processionary caterpillars. These little creatures are known by that name for a singular quality: each one blindly follows the caterpillar in front of it.

In his experiment, Fabre carefully arranged a group of them around the rim of a flowerpot, so that the lead caterpillar actually touched the last one in the line, making a complete circle. In the center pot, he put pine needles, the food of this type of caterpillar. As he expected, they began marching around the edge of the flowerpot.

Around and around they went, hour after hour, day after day, night after night. For seven full days and seven full nights, they marched after each other on the flowerpot rim. Finally, they fell down. Overcome by exhaustion and starvation. With more than enough food to feed all of them less than six inches away from where they were marching, they were not able to take advantage of it.

Zig Ziglar, who tells this story in his book, See You at the Top, notes that the caterpillars are like many of us. They failed to find the food right in front of them because they confused activity with accomplishment.

Now, the caterpillars may have had that marching tendency encoded in their DNA, but still, Zig has a point. In his view, many people reap only a fraction of the harvest life has to offer because they follow methods and procedures for no other reason than, “It’s always been done that way.” A sobering thought!

So, let’s make sure that we aren’t confusing activity, doing something, with accomplishment: doing the right thing at the right time. And let’s find creative ways to overcome the habits that keep us blindly following everyone else. Let’s march to the beat of a different drummer as we all write on!

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