8. Noah's character ark

Image from Public Domain Pictures

Noah was a strong character. He was also resilient. He had to be, because he suffered endless ridicule, and hate mail, and trolling on social media (only the first part is actually true - Editor). You see, Noah was told by God to build a large boat, in a place that was a long way away from the sea.

Even worse, when the people asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, he told them there was going to be a very large flood. They had a right to laugh at him. They had never seen rain, and there was no sign of any on the way. On the TV, the weather presenters were predicting another century of drought (also totally untrue - Editor). The people thought he had gone mad, invented ROFLing right there and then, and laughed their heads off at crazy old Noah.

But regardless of all the mocking, Noah persisted, and continued calmly to build his large boat. After a while the people got bored with mocking him, and went back to minding their business. Basically they sent him to Coventry (before Coventry existed? - Editor). Noah must have felt pretty bad about all this snubbing, but he stuck to his guns (guns didn't exist yet either - Editor). He was faithful to his word and after a long, long time, his life's project was finally completed.  The large boat was ready. Now for the next phase, said Noah. It was to gather animals together in pairs and get them on board the large boat. At this point even his family decided he was a basket case.

Again, the people raised their eyebrows, called him an idiot, and wondered why Noah was trying to organise a zoo on a boat. (zoos .... oh, never mind - Editor). It must have been chaos trying to gather every species together - think of the noise and the smell - but this doesn't account for other logistics, like animal welfare, transport, food and water, and of course, disposal of all the manure. None of these factors are mentioned in the Bible, not even in the footnotes. But what is mentioned is that the story ends well for Noah and his family, and also all of the animals. They were saved from the flood and lived happily ever after, and Noah even planted his own vineyard and got absolutely bladdered (what? - Editor). There's a bad ending for all the other people, who stood mocking and laughing. They all took an early bath.

It all just goes to show. If you have a project, a dream, or a vision - keep going with it, no matter what everyone else says. They may mock you, try to persuade you to stop, try to undermine you, or block you. But it's not their dream. It's yours. Be resilient, because against the odds, you can succeed, if you really put your mind to it. Building your resilience is a big part of growth and change and it strengthens character, so don't you dare give up.

“Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” - Nelson Mandela

Next time: 9. Hobson's multiple choice

Previous posts in this series
1. Pavlov's drooling dog
2. Chekhov's smoking gun
3. Occam's bloody razor
4. Schrödinger’s undead cat
5. Pandora's closed box
6. Frankenstein's well-meaning monster
7. Thor's lost hammer


Noah's character ark by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted by Steve Wheeler from Learning with e's