Samantha, a young ant, graduated, magnum cum laude from University of Antansas, and set out to change the world.
What she initially found, stepping into the “real-world” is an ocean of diversity, filled with gargantuan issues too complex to tackle. Feeling tiny, alone and helpless, her focus became more about survival than positive change.
One week in January, it rained every day, and started to flood. The single ant, Samantha, was swept into Wishing Springs. Fighting for survival, she comes across a raft, made of ants. She climbs aboard to safety.
Only to look down and realize, the raft was built using helpless baby ants as floating life-preservers. Sticking them, at the very bottom of the life rafts, they build with their own bodies.
Ants, bonding together to create a buoyancy and thus, increasing survival. Such is life, ants die, but the colony must continue to survive.
Time passes quickly. The young ant, Samantha, now half way through life, sees the world different from before, not more beautiful, not less, just different. Perception, maybe.
One week in January, it rained every day, and started to flood. The single ant, Samantha, was swept into Wishing Springs. Fighting for survival, she comes across a raft, made of ants.
But instead of climbing on the raft made of ants, she quickly finds a stick, and then another and binds them together, with a blade of grass. She builds a raft from floating sticks, and help ants from the floating ant raft, aboard the stick raft.
Getting their head above water, they were all able to breathe, moving from a fate of death and freeing them opportunity to thrive.
Actions taken for positive impact, doesn’t have to change the world to be important. One ant can’t do it alone, but together we make a difference. Together we can leave this world a little better than we found it. What ants do for themselves dies with them, what they do for other ants and the world remains, and is immortal.
Charles Kochel lives in the ozark mountains of Arkansas. He likes good stuff, like good people, good food and good music.
Charles fly fishes, wishes he could jam a mandolin and wants to leave a legacy of positive impact for others and the world.
His mantra – “The journey starts, not with having new vistas, but with having new eyes.~Marcel Proust
No Harm 