An Ant in the Balcony

One Sunday morning a wealthy man sat in his balcony enjoying sunshine and his coffee when a little ant on the small wall caught his eye which was going from one side to the other side of the balcony carrying a big leaf several times too large for its size. The man watched it for more than an hour. He saw that the ant faced many impediments during its journey, took a diversion and then continued towards destination.

At one point the tiny creature came across a crack in the floor. It paused for a little while, analyzed and then laid the huge leaf over the crack, walked over the leaf, picked the leaf on the other side then continued its journey.

The man was captivated by the cleverness of the ant, one of God’s tiniest creatures. The incident left the man in awe and forced him to contemplate over the miracle of Creation.

It showed the greatness of the Creator. In front of his eyes there was this tiny creature of God, lacking in size yet equipped with a brain to analyze, contemplate, reason, explore, discover and overcome. Along with all these capabilities, the man also noticed that this tiny creature shared some human shortcomings.

The man saw about an hour later the creature had reached its destination – a tiny hole in the floor which was an entrance to its underground dwelling. And it was at this point that the ant’s shortcoming that it shared with the man was revealed. How could the ant carry into the tiny hole the large leaf that it had managed to carefully bring to the destination? It simply couldn’t!

So the tiny creature, after all the painstaking and hard work and exercising great skills, overcoming all the difficulties along the way, just left behind the large leaf and went home empty-handed.

The ant had not thought about the end before it began its challenging journey and in the end the large leaf was nothing more than a burden to it. The creature had no option, but to leave it behind to reach its destination.

The man learned a great lesson that day.

Isn’t that the truth about our lives?

– unknown author

We worry about our family, we worry about our job, we worry about how to earn more money, we worry about where we should live in 5 bedroom or 6 bedroom house, what kind of vehicle to buy – a Mercedes or BMW or a Porsche, what kind of dresses to wear, all sorts of things, only to abandon all these things when we reach our destination – The Grave.

We don’t realize that in our life’s journey, we tread with utmost care and fear. Fear of losing our loved possessions. A journey which started with playfulness of the childhood, turned into a fearful walk of adulthood. Eventually entire journey is gripped with ‘fear of losing’.

Instead of carrying things like a burden, one should learn to enjoy loved possessions without too much attachment. Psychologically speaking, most of man’s endeavors are triggered by inferiority complexes. Learn to fight your complexes. The more detached you are more blissful state you are in. The more contended you are, more evolved you are. And happier!