To My Magnificent Agents, Staff and Friends:
“The Moth and the Star” is a fable written by the great American humorist James Thurber (1894 – 1961). It was printed in the story collection Fables for Our Time published in 1940.
In the story, a young moth aspires to fly up to a star, and keeps trying to reach that impossible goal. The other moths laugh at and scorn him. They tell him he should have a realistic goal, such as flying to a streetlight or house lamp. That’s what moths are supposed to do he is repeatedly told. Indeed, they all fly to lights and are burnt to ashes. The dreamy, unrealistic young moth keeps focused on flying to a star. And, although he never reaches the stars, he lives a long and happy life.
The Moth and the Star
By: James Thurber
A young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. “Star’s aren’t the thing to hang around,” she said; “lamps are the thing to hang around.” “You get somewhere that way,” said the moth’s father. “You don’t get anywhere chasing stars.”
But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home worn out with his vain endeavor.
One day his father said to him, “You haven’t burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you were never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!”
The moth left his father’s house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top branches of an elm.
He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. His parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young.
Moral: He who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow.
I recall first reading this Thurber fable in a freshman high school English class. What I took away from the tale was that being different is not something bad and that your dreams are most important in shaping the outcome and quality of your life. Now, nearly fifty years later, my take on this story hasn’t changed much. To achieve you must perceive. Sure, you must be hungry; hungry for success; hungry for victory; and hungry simply to become the best that you can be. But, it always starts with a dream.
Once you have a dream in life that takes a lot of energy, that requires a lot of work, that incurs a great deal of interest and that is a challenge to you, you will always look forward to waking up to see what the new day brings. If you are going to achieve anything in life, you have to aim at it. And, if you’re going to aim at anything, why not the stars?
It is in your desire, determination and dedication to the pursuit of a dream that you achieve “deep and lasting pleasure,” whether or not the dream is actually realized.
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the un-rightable wrong
To be better far than you are
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless,
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world would be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.
Have an AWE-full weekend!
Bill