While having lunch outdoors, I noticed an ant walking around the rim of the round table. Round, and round, and round, and round it walked in a neverending circle.
Why do you think it did this? Was this a good thing, or a bad thing?
It got me thinking, that little ant.
What do you think of ants? Industrious? Altruistic, working for the common good of their community? Capable of carrying huge burdens? Undermining? Destructive? Irritating? Biting?
If you were that ant, walking round and round that table rim, what might be going through your mind?
“If you do not first succeed, try, try and try again,” flashed into my mind, as I took another bite of my cheese sandwich. It was a spider, not an ant, that inspired the 14th Century Scottish king, Robert the Bruce, to come up with that one. As legend has it, the king was holed up in an old hut following yet another defeat in battle. One day, he watched a spider trying to build a web between two beams. Five times in a row, the spider spun a long thread and tried to attach it to the second beam, and five times in a row she failed.
“And five times the English have defeated me in battle,” the king thought.
At that, the spider spun a new thread and tried again. This time, she succeeded, and inspired Robert the Bruce to go to battle one more time. And that’s how the famous Battle of Bannockburn was won. Not that the spider knew anything about her role in changing the future of Scotland. Neither did she know, when she set out to weave her web, that she would be immortalised in British poems and textbooks and inspire millions of people to “try, try and try again” for at least the next 700 years.
“Ah, little ant,” I thought, “maybe the same old path is getting you the same old results. To succeed, maybe you need to get off the treadmill.”
At that, the ant promptly took a right turn, and marched off down the table leg. Who knows where his new adventure will take him!
I finished my cheese sandwich, went back to my computer, and investigated a new adventure.
In waking life and in dreams, what we see is our own reflection. What did you think about the ant in my story? What did my little ant help you to see about yourself?
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