Today's Inspiration #2

Today's inspiration:  Aesop's Fables were once required reading for scholars.  I went out for a walk earlier to work out a scene for my current writing project, and my mind drifted to thoughts of morals and common sense.  Upon returning home I looked up morals in wikipedia - this brought me to Aesop's fables.  I downloaded a free Kobo version of the fables and wasted a few hours reading.

It seems that a lot of the essence of common sense exists in these fables:  the tortoise and the hare, the ants and the grasshopper and there are hundreds more.   They have served as the inspiration for many books, plays, movies and songs.  For example, the fable "The Mountain in Labour" ends with the moral "Don't make much ado about nothing" - perhaps the inspiration for another famous work of that name written thousands of years later by Shakespeare?

If the written text seems too stale for you, you can always try the youtube versions: Rocky and Bullwinkle had a segment called Aesop and Son that was hilarious.  Here's a link to one of my favourites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy7r9kO44z8&feature=related

Inspiration fizzled out?  read (or watch) a few of these fables - one may be just the spark you need to reignite the flame of creativity.