On one of our morning walks this week, I noticed a snail slowly making its way across the sidewalk. And since I find snails to be fascinating and my muse, I paused to take some pictures. I was snapping away when a small dried flower petal flew into the snail’s face. I thought at first that the snail would be pleased by this because I thought it might consider the petal to be food. Instead, the snail reared its head back and forth in obvious displeasure. Then it started to move the petal down out of its face and climb over it with its body. The snail made such a large and almost over exaggerated movement to get its body over this tiny bit of flower debri.

Later on, I was teaching my chair yoga class where I had my students stretch their arms over head and pretend to press their palms into the ceiling. Then I had them pull one finger in at a time until they made a fist. I had them squeeze for a breath before releasing and then repeating the exercise. One of my students, Melissa, made a face and said “Why do I hate this so much? It seems like such a simple task!” I laughed and agreed. It did seem like a really simple exercise, but it turned out to be something rather difficult. No one in my class that day enjoyed this exercise. Then I told my class about the snail. Just because a task might be easy for you, doesn’t mean that it’s easy for everyone. But also, the looks of a task can be deceitful. The lesson this snail teaches me is to have greater patience for others as well as for myself. Because even though a task or obstacle might actually be simple, it still requires some energy and we’ve all been in that place where we just don’t have that energy to spare.

It’s all about perspective.

Snails have a lot to teach us about how we approach obstacles and slowing down to be mindful in the tackling of that obstacle.