Penny Post #31: The March of the Ants
A Bug's Life.
My world feels very small right now. The 567 square feet that I live in feels more like 1 square foot of tight breaths and a body curled in on itself. As I wrote last week, “I have the acute sense that there is something wrong. That my destination is not my true end, that I’m going in the wrong direction. It is an eerie feeling to know that the path you chose is simply a dead end.”
Claustrophobia befalls me in of a city of 1.382 million people and thousands of miles of land. I feel myself growing restless, for what I’m unsure. But I notice the subtitles of my body winding up, unable to focus on even the smallest of tasks, desperate for distraction.
Thankfully, San Diego’s weather allows me to spend time outside most days. Last Thursday’s lunch break was spent in the office park I work in. I ate & responded to emails before looking at the clock and realizing the twenty minutes I had left would drag on if I didn’t find somewhere else for my feet to go.
I began walking towards the edge of the property. There was a brick wall that looked particularly comfortable for a tired tush, so I sunk my Steve Maddens into some dampened, muddy grass, not caring about the stains left on the black leather. My upper body strength (or lack thereof) was forgotten when I noticed one of nature’s most curious phenomena:
I saw one and then two and then hundreds of ants marching up and down this brick wall that I was - seconds before - determined to sit on.
I was struck by their pace and their formation. Not one ant strayed off their well-forged path. The ant highway was narrow yet had room for ants to travel in both directions, likely finding resources for their nest. A quick google search taught me that these ants were known as “worker ants” and are typically sterile, wingless females responsible for much of the labor within the colony.
My first thought was curiosity at how gender, mobility, and fertility played a role in the caste system of these ants. It seemed far too complicated for their microscopic world and far too complicated from my microscopic perspective. Alas, ants have castes. Castes are dependent on the insect’s reproductive organs, the shapes of their bodies, and whether or not they can fly. My second thought: huh, sounds familiar.
I found resonance in the journey of the worker ants. I felt as if one myself. “Working” nine to five to feed myself and have shelter and participate in society. I felt as if one of the milieu of worker ants that made their way to and from their nest each day to complete their task only to return at the end of day feeling unfulfilled and hapless. I returned from my lunch break having just eaten yet starving for something else.
Climbing the brick wall with your co-workers has its moments. When you find a leaf to bring back to the colony. When you work together to lift a piece of popcorn across 1 foot of concrete. When you find droplet of rain water to moisten your dry throat. (Do ants drink water?)
But climbing the brick wall mostly sucks. There are the cracks that you get stuck in and spend hours screaming for help. There are the human feet you helplessly dodge. There are the mobs of other insects that find you and eat you.
The twenty minutes remaining of my lunch break passed quickly in my curiosity. It was time to leave the ant’s nest. I returned inside, unlocked my computer screen, and all that I had just witnessed faded away in blue light.
I took a video, knowing I would forget and Tim Cook would remind me.
Rewatching the video now, I’m struck by their sense of community. Everything these worker ants do is for the betterment of their colony. Maybe there is never a thought of doing anything else given the size of their brains, yet I wonder for them.
I find myself wishing to be as small as an ant. Then maybe the world would feel bigger. The 567 square feet that I live in might feel full of infinite possibility. I might know that dead ends aren’t hopeless, they’re just redirection.
Until next time,
Kiera