Yesterday I noticed an ant on my desk.  I see them fairly often around here, but this one stopped and seemed to be facing me as I leaned in to watch him more closely.  He raised up on his back feet, waved his front legs in the air, and then took off across the rest of my desk.  I watched him walk all the way down the right leg, across the floor, and then up the leg of my kids’ table.  This took about 20 minutes since he stopped, meandered around a bit I suppose searching for food, and headed back toward the table several times.

I noticed as he crawled up the table leg that there was a plate with a bit of toast and jelly my kids left from breakfast, and I wondered if he knew there was a prize waiting for him after his long journey or if he just happened to end up crawling up that particular piece of wood.  Upon reflection I think he knew my kids eat breakfast on that table most mornings, so he most likely knew there was a good chance a crumb or probably a feast would be found there waiting for him.  As he slowly made his way I thought of many days where I meandered along my way to accomplish some task, not really sure if there was a reward waiting for me or not, and I thought how the ant didn’t seem to consider giving up or become discouraged at all.  Here I was, this huge being leaning over him casting a shadow on him, but he simply waved my direction and went on his mission undeterred.

Now I don’t recommend waving in every possible adversary’s face, but I thought it was pretty impressive and was something I will remember.  He had no idea whether I was about to squash him or give him a bit of food to munch through or carry back to his nest.  He waved in my direction and just took off despite my scrutiny and the danger I represented.  Was that hive mentality where the individual blindly serves the community and despite all obstacles and personal threats to safety, or does he know something we don’t?  He didn’t run and hide, stop his quest, or even change direction when a huge creature towered over him, but instead lived his ant life to the fullest.  I’m not sure what that means for an ant, but I did see him apparently enjoying that bit of jelly he found.

Perhaps we can take a hunt from the lesson of my small friend the ant.  This world is pretty scary now, and we know that we and our families are in varying degrees of danger whether we are home sleeping in bed, on the bus, in the classroom or workplace, or relaxing at the mall.  We can stop, wave at the stress surrounding us and then move on to live our lives as we would if we weren’t constantly reminded that it could all end any moment in some horrible disastrous flame-out, or we can hide in the closet with our foil hats on our heads.  I tend to be a pretty cautious person when it comes to the safety of my family, but I think after watching that ant exploring my floor and chowing down happily on that jelly I will choose to live like the ant instead of the human in the closet.  Foil hats tend to get hot and stuffy over time, you can’t see the stars from the closet, and I want to enjoy all the jelly I happen to come across in my travels even if a giant may slap me silly in the middle of it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 12:24 am and is filed under Meditations, Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.