The Art of Ant Torture

When I was a child, I took great fiendish delight in burying ants. I remained steadily amused for several minutes dropping handfuls of dirt on poor, innocent ants, and chortling with delight as they would tunnel through the obstacle and break through to the sunlight…only to have me drop another trap on their unsuspecting heads. But I was discriminatory. I did not bury ants that were one solid color, or ones that were small and harmless. Oh no, I only buried the big smelly red ones with the black butts. They were my enemy. They were the ones that built gigantic ant mounds in my back yard, along the fences, in the fields along the irrigation ditches, the base of the trees I so liked to climb, and virtually everywhere a child roams. Their bites hurt. So I buried them until they gave up trying to tunnel out. If I was feeling particularly generous on any given day, I would award only the most persistent ant his life. He would struggle to freedom over and over again, disregarding the numerous bombshells that clouded his sunlight, and then at the last moment, the sunlight would remain unblocked. He did not completely conquer me, however, because I would dig a pit and leave him in the bottom to crawl out of when he regained his strength.

I was thinking about school the other day, and realized that the ants have come back to wreak their revenge. Only they are much wiser assailants than I; they have disguised themselves as busy-ness. One project hits me, and just as I finally see the light of day, another one crashes on top of my head. And I get so wrapped up in trying to crawl out of the stupid obstacles that I forget to breathe and strategize my moves. Without a goal, without a plan, I am but a poor blind fool trying to climb the same mountain, the same way, even though it continues to be a failing technique.

So, the moral of the story is to leave the ants alone!