Learning from Ants

Learning from Ants

It is not that our circumstances define who we are but it is rather about how we define our circumstances.

When ants are presented with an obstacle, such as a clump of soil or a rock, they will move around it, climb over and even under it. What they don’t do is give up.

A year ago I was traveling in Costa Rica for a week. It is a tropical paradise, not unlike my home of Borneo. Being on the same line of latitude as Borneo at times I felt I was home, from the short bursts of rain showers throughout the day to the warm comforting rays of the sun, caressing my body as I walked along the beaches.

Costa Rica is vibrantly rich, with its abundant flowers and trees, unique wild life, inviting waters and happy people. While the country has only about 0.25 percent of the of the world’s landmass, it contains five percent of the world’s biodiversity. 

I spent most of my time on the west coast, in Costa Rica’s smallest national park.  One morning, after a walk along the beach, I took the undulating path back through the rainforest to the road, a 15-minute stroll. As I gazed up at the trees listening to the alarming sounds of the howler monkeys, and hoping to see one, something on a tree branch caught my attention. In Costa Rica there is an interesting family of ants called the leaf cutter ants. And there they were, hundreds of large ants carrying even larger pieces of cut leaves, in a frenzied parade along the tree branches. I stopped to follow their path with my eyes, as they descended almost military-like, marching straight down the huge tree trunks and along the ground. I had not seen or heard about leaf cutter ants before, so I was quite intrigued. I started to follow them for several minutes. Eventually, they started to disappear into a hole in the ground, their home, where the leaves are chewed but not eaten, and stored for food.

As I crouched down observing the ants, I noticed a small stream right in their path. What amazed me was that they had found a way to get across, a small branch provided a bridge. These ants were never going to quit. When the ants came across an obstacle, they would go left or right of it, go over or under, or even move it. The ants confronted their obstacles. They were just ants. They were not defined by their struggle. They just got on with it.

I stood up and started back on the path. It is not that the path is always easy. It won’t be. Life won’t always be easy. Our circumstances may present us with difficulties, not just obstacles in our way but sometimes mountains. But that is not what defines us. The way we see our obstacles reveal who we are. Instead of seeing obstacles as difficult or negative, we can see them as opportunities for growth, for love, for compassion. This defines who we are. Mountains can potentially stop us. If we can’t go around them or move them, we may have to climb them. Cath Jayasuriya

Navigating through Life

We all walk through life with a red tipped cane.  We may like to say what we’ll do tomorrow, but there is no way to know whether or not our plans will come to fruition. We are clueless about what will happen from one week to the next much less next year or the next moment!

Navigating thorugh Difficult Times

The following article was written by Gwen Randall-Young. Gwen is an author and psychotherapist in private practice. For more articles and information on her books and CDs go to http://www.gwen.ca/.

Navigating Through Difficult Times

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.

Louisa May Alcott

The recent hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and now the fear of a pandemic, may make us feel we are living in dangerous times. Even if we have not been directly affected, we have seen our fellow humans endure the unimaginable. If it can happen to them, some twist of fate could surely render us as vulnerable, turning our world upside down. Our bubble of security could easily burst.

The solid ground of our lives may begin feeling more like thin ice. If we are grounded and centered in the personal world of our own construction, who are we when some unexpected event results in its deconstruction?

Much as we may have the illusion that we are in control of our lives, we do not know which of our many possible futures will play itself out. Ego could be in for a shock if its defining aspects are suddenly non-existent. If the job no longer exists, the home, community or city is destroyed, health is unstable, or loved ones are lost, ego can collapse. It is as though those aspects were the pillars that held ego aloft, and if even one falls, the whole structure that was ego can come crashing down.

It is attachment that is the problem. If we are attached to the world being a certain way, we are not likely working on how we will sustain ourselves if those attachments are lost. I am reminded of a dear friend who was about to undergo chemotherapy. She had lovely long blonde hair, and knew it would likely begin falling out in clumps. Realizing that would be difficult to deal with, she cut her hair very short before she started treatments. She let go of it before it was gone, and so was prepared when what little was left began to go.

Buddhism teaches about the suffering that is caused by attachment. The more attached we are, the more we will suffer when we lose something. It was interesting to see some of the very poor who were displaced after hurricane Katrina. Within days they were working at new jobs in Texas, and looking for places to live, fully into starting their new lives. For some, it represented a better opportunity.

This would not be the case for those who were perhaps highly successful due to a thriving business or busy law practice, for example, and lost not only a lucrative source of income, but a social circle and clientele that were a big part of who they were.

How then do we prepare ourselves to develop the resilience and courage to deal with the unknown, should it suddenly present itself in a way that shakes our world?

Like my friend with the chemo, we release our attachment before it is wrenched from our grasp. Does that mean we let go of anything, or anyone that is important to us? No, we do not let go of them, only to our attachment to them.

We must acknowledge that everything in life is temporary and transient. Nothing stays the same, and there are no guarantees. Eventually, we must let go of everything. We have to think about that once in a while, so that our inner compass keeps pointing in the right direction. We can have mini fire drills in our mind: what plan can we build for coping with a huge loss or change in our lives?

If we develop an alternate life plan that we could utilize in the event of the death of a spouse, loss of job, health, or other major crisis, then although we still may be shocked, we need not be dumbfounded.

Our journey here is not all about ego, much as ego would like to think that it is. It is about soul, and only soul. It is about learning to get ego out of the way so we can know our soul. We come into the world as a naked soul, devoid of any ego trappings, and we leave the same way. If we release our attachment to ego baggage along the way, we are able to be responsive and adaptable to whatever comes.

Knowing this about ourselves, we are free to savor each day of our lives from a love-based rather than a fear-based perspective. We can be grateful for our blessings, as well as for the strength and courage we know will be there when we need it.