THE STORY OF THE ANTS
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In every personâs life there is a stretch of days, maybe years, when the weight and worry of the world rests so heavy that it bends your spine. During one such stretchâthe worst of my life, thump on woodâI appeared so dark and empty that no light could escape my black holes for eyes. Everything, it seemed, was bad. My limbs, which tended to be nimble, were drained of energy. My meals, which tended to be delicious, all tasted of cardboard. Even the spring breezeâthe way it frisked the leavesâfelt dead to me, and there was little keeping me from deliberately stepping into the street.
Dumped from life and needing some advice, I called upon my grandfather. Having survived jaggeder ages than mine, I suspected the old man to have a wise way of climbing out of these cavernous moods. Sure enough, when I arrived at my grandfatherâs door, he was quick to assist. He gripped me by the collar, shoved me towards a mugful of liquor, and shouted Listen up my boy! Youâre going to get out of this alive. First a cold bath, then some hot stew. And when you listen to what I have to say, youâll see that everything is more than fine.
When I was washed and warmed with stew, the old man pulled up his seat to mine, popped open a bottle of the good stuff, and recalled a university professor who looked much like him: speckled mustache, wiry glasses, long spindly legs like a carnival man. Now this professor was a timid fellow. He was shy around his fellow faculty members. Oh, he was shy around his wife. But he was never shy around his students. No, upon entering the walls of the classroom, a curious smile always pulled itself across the professorâs mouth, and his timidness gave way to a startling exuberance. During lessons he leapt across the room like a dancer, wriggling his toes with every fact he imparted. He recited lectures in the register of a boisterous tenor, all the while winking and marking the walls with his chalk-stick. He once performed an original musicalâfive entire acts, an apiary in the classroomâall to tighten one studentâs grasp of an admittedly tangential lesson in beekeeping. The possibility of improving young peopleâs lives with unworn ways of thinking spared no time for the professorâs inhibitions. He would bawk like a chicken if it helped his students, or kick over his chair, or contort his arms into charts and diagramsâhis body possessed by the soft-eyed spirit of education.
The professor paced and sweated over his studentsâ happiness, and in this respect, as the years collected and blurred, one student in particular kept him up at night: a gifted boy, shy like the professor, but more acutely so. And solemn. And terribly bright and sweet! All semester long, the student spoke up only once. It was an expert contributionâthe sort of comment that captains the discussion, like a wobbly ship, toward the glittering waters of its perfect course. When he spoke, however, his voice trembled, and his face became splotchy, and right in the middle he got up and hurried for the bathroom. The student possessed an extreme sense of his own existence. He worried that his presence on earth was a burden. He said Sorry after he spoke. He said Sorry after he sneezed. He began his midterm essay with an acknowledgement of its poor writing quality and a list of regrets including not beginning his research sooner, because you see there were was a stocking issue at the library, and the editions required for his preferred analysis were not available, and by the way his roommate has been a disturbance lately, and there are certain troubles at home, and as compensation for all of these obstacles please find attached an additional, more thorough essay on an adjacent topic.
The professor tried to lead the student into confidence. He lent him copies of Boethius and Catullus, for which the student was grateful, but apologized week after week for not returning sooner. He called on the student in class, hoping to relieve the boyâs burdensome silence, but the student simply sat there, twitching, like a stunned insect. The professor wrote commending notes in the studentâs papers and patted his shoulder when he handed them back, but no act of assurance could lift the heaviness that weighed on the child. A grave, sickly look stuck to his face, and when the professor patted the studentâs shoulder, he flinched.
One day, as the semester neared its end and the campus bloomed in anticipation of summer, the student missed class without warning. That evening, turning the key to his office mailbox, the professor half-expected a long letter of apology to be folded among his usual paperwork, but there was no letter. When the student missed class again the following week, the professor worried. He phoned the student. And the studentâs parents. But there was no answer at the dormitory, and the boyâs mother was shy to admit how long it had been since they last spoke. Then, on final exam day, when all the desks in the classroom were filled except for one, the professor panicked. He tapped his pencil and eyed the door as the clock ticked toward the end of the hour. It wasnât until after the bell had rung, and all the stragglers had trickled out of the classroom, smiling at the promise of a thoughtless summer, that the student arrived.
He moved with the tired gloom of an inmate approaching his cell.
The professor let out a tremendous sigh and hurried the student to his desk.
The student shook his head back and forth, rejecting the welling sadness that was about to pour out of him. Iâm sorry, he said. Please know that I mean well. You must trust that I admire you. But there is something unbearable. It keeps me from class. It keeps me from friendships. It is an endless sinking feeling, and it takes and it takes and it takes. I am doomed to a life that scares me. Sometimes I look out the window and all I see is the windowpane.
The professor listened close as the student went on. His voice cracked and tears dripped from his jawline. How do you do it? he asked the professor. How do you be happy?
With a long inhale the professor considered the question. And then right away he unlodged a story from his rolodex of stories. He talked of an obscure figure from ancient Greece: a soldier, born on the battlefield, fed from a mixture of milk and blood, famous for felling innumerable enemies with only his bare hands. He once struck an opponent between the eyes such that his skull split in his helmet and fell to the earth as two halves of pulpy fruit. After many years, however, the destruction of war exhausted the soldierâs spirit. Grateful to the fates which kept him alive and sorry to those unknown sons who died in his wake, the soldier gave up the battlefield and headed for the city. Violence being his only trade, he earned a living in the boxing circleâbut with a newfound code of honor. While many athletes fought slaves for money or spectacle, the soldier never once took combat with an unwilling participant. Though several in his rank wore knuckledusters and sought to disfigure their opponents, the soldier wore leather straps and cared to cause no injury. And unlike his fatherland who found great glory in the bloodshed of a deathmatch, the soldier resolved never to end another life.
He trained many apprentices under this code. They obeyed the soldier with great reverence and planted wildflowers on withered battlegrounds. One apprentice, especially vibrant, became friends with the soldier. In fact they were lovers. They sparred in the dark of morning while the last few stars still punctured the sky. Then a small breakfast of sardines before heading off to the dayâs first matches. Eager to prove his virtue to the soldier, the apprentice recited long poems about the disgrace of war and the corruptibility of man. In the boxing circle, he bowed excessively to his opponents and had a trademark of always refusing the first punch. And in between matches, he made progress on a fresco of a warrior laying down his weapons and transforming into a lamb. The soldier smiled upon these efforts kindly. In the hottest hours of the afternoon they made love beneath the shade of an olive tree. Then more matches and a roast bird before falling into each otherâs grip and mouthing each otherâs wounds, soothed by the coolness of stone walls. Lying together at night, breathing in tandem, their shadows stretched out and receded like waves. The apprentice marveled at the soldierâs shadow and all that he wished to become.
Oneâs wishes cannot persuade the will of fate, however, for the gods stand by no one when they are contrary. On a doomed afternoon, with black flies sipping his sweat, the apprentice fought a most vicious opponent. The opponent was a hulking miscreation with clubs for arms and spiked gloves that bit like snake fangs. With a few adjustments of his body, the opponent shattered the apprentice, battered and blinded him. The apprentice fell to his knees. His lungs stopped pumping. His stomach emptied itself of that morningâs sardines. His eyes were swollen and his mouth was torn open and the scorching sun stung his broken flesh. The apprentice was ready to breathe his life away. Then, summoning something dark and valiant, he girded himself to his feet and unleashed a wave of blows on the opponent. Jab after jab, he landed each strike with square precision, trotting about the circle like a nimble colt. Until he struck too hard. In a fleshy thud the match was over. The opponent lurched and spasmed, then he stopped moving. Cold blood lapped at the apprenticeâs feet. He shut his eyes from the destruction he pledged never to commit, and he screamed that the strings of fate untie himâplease, untie him!âfrom this awful moment.
As the crowd gathered and gasped at the lifeless pile of limbs, the apprentice took a fragile step backwards. He could not stay. He could not go home either. No, the shame of dishonoring his most treasured companion was too much to bear. So he ran. He paid no goodbye to the soldier, and he ran for the cliffs. He retreated to a dark cavern dotted with dried-up bat droppings, wishing himself dead in his opponentâs stead. After several days the soldier found him there, sucking water from rocks and wailing to a puddle. The soldier clutched his lover and slapped him to attention. He stuffed bread and wine into the apprenticeâs mouth and insisted forgiveness, that it was an accident, that his grief would soon unswell and mend, like a burst lip.
Wretched misery dwells in my heart, the apprentice said. Let dogs gnaw at my bones. Open the gates of the ground and count me among the dead. You have survived this sorrow, he said. You must know the answer. How does one overcome such pain?
And with that, the soldier rested a hand on the apprenticeâs cheek, enjoyed a glug of wine, and recounted a story he heard on a faraway battle: about an Old Master from the Distant Eastâthat unknowable world where ricestalks stretch up to an elephantâs eye. While the Old Master was not always old, she was forever unrivaled in the arts of her province. By age five, she replicated the scrolls of the village elders. By age ten, she performed a dazzling reed-strumming at the Burial of the Empress. And by age fifteen, she was welcomed among butterflies with her dancing. From all over the land patrons coveted her art, and they offered her impossible fortunes in order to possess it: temple bells, gilt saddle fittings, a flock of the rarest birds. Soon, like a sip of warm wine, the temptation of the material world sedated the Old Master, and she surrendered to its friendly grip. She traded songs for mirrors. She spilled dresses on the floor and laughed at cruel men. She danced on red carpets littered with coins. And then one day, with the harsh taste of smoke in her mouth, the Old Master quit these ambitions. She exchanged her silvery possessions for a thatched hut and a silty water well. There, she has resided ever since, in the pursuit of an unknown truth, tending fruit trees and wayward travelers. She vowed never to create again, except for once a season, molding a single vessel out of clay.
Not far from the Old Masterâs hut, there lived a young poet. The poet possessed an exceptional talent, with songs so sweet they could bring out the moon in the daytime. Every morning, with her legs folded in the grass, the poet sipped wheat tea and recorded her sense of the seasons. She wrote of a gust of wind whitening the waterbirds. She wrote of radishes huddled in a snowstorm. She wrote of the green plums, and the cuckoos, and an old man cutting barley, his body bent like a sickle. One ordinary morning, the poet found that her inspiration had vanished. Everything which once invigorated her was boring. The young greens were boring. The eyes of the fish owls were boring. She had fallen out of tune with existence. There was no tranquility in the sound of water after a frog leaps in. A melon flecked with dirt filled her with unspeakable dread. Unable to find meaning in her surroundings, the poet consulted the river, whose ever-changing ripples always calmed her restless spirit. But when she looked into the water, all she could think about was jumping in and breathing the blue-brown liquid.
With nowhere else to turn, the poet visited the Old Master.
Please, she cried. Every step I take crushes the wings of dandelions. I see the sun shining, but it doesnât shine on me. Your wisdom is boundless. Is life truly so empty?
The Old Master was focused on a handful of clay. She thumbed and shaped the material into an elegant bowl, and when the bowl was complete, she wet it back to clay. Then she explained that even with insects, some can sing and some canât. Let me tell you about a lakeside where two trees live. Go there and find them. They will refill your spirit.
Wiping her nose, the poet thanked the Old Master. She wandered to the edge of the village, past the river, and through a forest of cedars. The poet walked until twilight. Fireflies dotted her vision. And as the sun went down and the cicadas stirred, she finally arrived at the lakeside that the Old Master spoke about.
Sure enough, across the water, two trees stood: one tree was tall and sturdy, the other trembled in the wind.
Beside the trees were a pair of rocks: one rock was strong and immovable, the other was weathered from rainfall.
And beside the rocks were a pair of ants: one ant was big and good-humored, the other was little and full of despair.
And if you listened very close, you could hear a voiceâthe voice of the big antâtwinkling soft as a dewdrop. It said something very important, the meaning of which sparked enormous relief in the little ant, causing him to say Ah.
The sigh was so calm that it steadied the weathered rock.
In turn, the tree which had been trembling stopped trembling.
At which the poet recalled the beauty of the world.
Hearing this, the apprentice hugged his lover.
So too, the student left the classroom, excited and deserving of a happy summer.
But what did the ant say?
Pardon? my grandfather asked.
The big ant to the little ant, what did it say? I waited there, dumbfounded, stew dribbling from my tired lips.
Whatâs that now?
Grandpa! What⊠What are you⊠What is the point of all this? What am I supposed to do? There must be an answer. There must be some way to go on.
My grandfather pulled an afghan up to his chest. Then he took a long sip from his drink and began cleaning his spectacles. When he finished, I saw myself in the reflection of the lenses.
There is no end to despair. My duty is to help you, and yours is to be helped. But I will fail in this duty as you have failed in yours. Based on the boundless past and my sliver of experiences within, I can only guess what is correct to say in this moment. Yesterday I ran the same speed as the wind. When I moved, the air around me was still. You must understand that my life is no greater than yours. Surely this must come as some disappointment, as you inevitably view me as the major version of yourself. Yesterday I matched my voice to a waterfallâs. I adjusted my pitch until all sound disappeared. I do not know the route to your happiness, and the temptation to act as if I do is terrifying. Of course there are things I learned the hard way. It is useless to apply for jobs in December. Sundays should be spent in your underwear. The best season is always the next one. I know these things to be true, and I can tell you about them. But the great big pine cone in the room is that for eternity in any direction, there are things much bigger and smaller than both of us. Everything tugs at the end of something else. Yesterday I was a baby on the forest floor. The flowers were thick with a trillion petals. Today, I can still smell them. The resolution for your suffering is elsewhere on this grand scale of experiences. To place others on a pedestal is to dig yourself into the ground. Look elsewhere, tough guy. Youâre an almond blossom, little man. Do you believe your concerns are more significant than a sunflower seedâs? It makes me smile to think so. Your worries are four thousand dollars. They are exciting then gone. Look elsewhere to an untold story, for everything is speaking. Yesterday you cried as powerful as a waterfall. And I cried too, because I wanted the sound to disappear. I cannot teach you your joy, for I only know my own. Illusion. Play. The paradoxes of grasping. It is the burden of life to be many ages at once without seeing the end of time. The trick is to see yourself in even the strangest things, like a grassblade, or a car part, or a human.
I am telling you what the big ant said.
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