我还不如一只龟?

Saw something weird, but thought-provoking today.

There's this huge canal that I walk along everday on my way home. It's one of those huge water drainage thing that is so wide, it sometimes look like a river for we Singaporeans who are really starving for some beautiful sceneries. But (whatever),Hey don't laugh, sometimes there are white crane-like birds preying there, I even spotted a king-fisher there once. But really, I'm sidetracking. Today, I saw something rather amazing.

I saw this huge tortoise, it was almost the size of my foot. But it was struggling to swim against the currents. the canal originally forked out in 3 directions but they met at a point and flows down a short step creating a tiny rapid (a really small version of a waterfall) The water flows towards the sea and the tortoise was swimming in the opposite direction. It kept swimming towards the rapid, and it kept getting flushed backwards. But it kept going, getting pushed back, kept going, getting pushed back, kept going and getting pushed back. The tortoise was quite determined to get to the other side of the rapid. But it had 2 obstacles. The rapid which kept pushing it back and the step which was too high for it to crawl across(unless it stood on 2 legs). It kept raising its head as if to gauge the height of the thing. And everytime it tried to get close it got flushed backwards. It tried to swim to the side where the force of the falling water was smaller but no matter what it tried, it was impossible. I stayed there for more than 5 minutes just watching the tortoise struggling to get to the other side. My sis and I were speculating, what could be driving it to want to get to the other side. I thought maybe it was trying to get home. My sis suggested that maybe it laid some eggs it was trying it get to. After watching a while more of its futile attempt. We walked off. My sis told me that the tide rises at around 5 pm. And when the tide rises, it would be able to swim across. I hope the tortoise had not given up and hope that it has now reached where it wanted to go.

But I wonder if I would be able to be as determined or as stupid (depending on how you see it) as the tortoise, to keep trying and trying and trying even though the chances are low that it will cross over. I wonder what happened to it now. Hopefully, it has found its way home and are watching over her eggs.