Type: Philosophical/Journal
We Are the Ant Men
I took a broken end of a broom handle and jabbed it into the plumb black spider I had cornered in a stucco well.
It died on initial impact. No one’s suffering had to linger.
I wiped its crumpled body across the concrete and tried to see if I could still recognize any observable parts. The spider was not so plump as before, but still leggy.
I returned to the flower beds for a moment to see if any other creature had decided to come out to view my weeding. When I sat back on my haunches again, the remains of the spider had attracted interest from the steady ant stream along the concrete alleys.
I continued checking on the situation as the activity around the arachnid grew. Word spread from feeler to feeler; at first the ants were in a frenzy of suspicion, and then when no one died some crawled over the body, while others dashed away to spread the news to the colony.
Soon the corpse swelled with writhing black points. Sometime after that the ants hurried away with lots of inscrutable somethings, too small for my eyes to distinguish, but clearly desired by them. Then a single ant proudly carried what looked like the entire spider head toward the crack in the concrete where I suspected the ants dwell.
As I pondered the insect world, I could not help but compare the order of ant paths to highway commutes, or the touching of feelers to the twittering of social media or more archaic methods of communication. The outward orders of both worlds became exceedingly similar the longer I stared.
The inward worlds aligned, too; the whole nest would probably celebrate that single ant as some sort of hero. “Dig in everyone, my might has provided the feast,” the ant would boast, and tell erroneous stories about how it single-handedly slayed the bloated black beast. The trophy of the spider’s head would sit on the banquet pedestal of the great hall as a testimony to all future generations of the ingenuity and success of what an individual ant can do.
All the while, the ant knows it did not provide the feast, but it does not want to tell its fellow ants. “You know what,” the ant never says, “I couldn’t have done this if the beast hadn’t been laying out dead already. No, I am not strong enough to have killed it or even looked at it without trembling.” The ant fails to acknowledge a higher power having given such an impressive boon to the tiny, tangible realm.
And what for? The ant certainly labored in dragging the thing the distance home. None of the other ants can make this situation happen again just as it did anytime soon. The ant starts to believe what it says to its fellows. “I did it all by myself,” says the single ant. Tomorrow the ant may be squashed by a shoe or eaten alive by a sparrow, but today the ant has claimed this accomplishment as its own.
Some days we are the ant men. We claim we have done things by ourselves. We claim the opportunities given our way, the accomplishments of a higher power, as our own – in fact, we hardly even talk about a God working anymore, even to each other.
Perhaps even to ourselves the majority of the time.
That does not mean He’s not working, it just means we have a limited perspective of our small world, which each year is growing smaller with the self-promotion practically required to participate in a digital society.
Ants are strong. Ants can carry the souvenirs of a struggle on their (metaphorical) backs, in their (literal) mouths, and often with help from a couple of its fellows. However, a single ant is a single ant, and there are many spiders and sparrows and boots to face.
The accomplishments of this day and the serendipitous encounters provided will not save the ant men. Ants of all size would do well to remember those everyday miracles of which are too often forgotten.
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