Just a Little Ant

My Dad finally bought some ant traps.

Normally I might be against the traps, but this year the ants chose to create chaos. I mean, you can see the masses of tiny bodies swarming up the columns of the front porch – trying to slyly sneak in the windows. They'll crawl along zigzag – starting to go one way, and then instantly deciding the other way looks better. It’s like they have a little creek to follow, with its own twists and turns, ups and downs. They’ll bump into each other like boats, and then back up, keep going. Yeah, they love to keep life exciting.

But even though the ants are crawling all over, it’s so easy to get rid of them. Of course - most of us know that. I mean, it’s no big deal: we step on them & they’re dead, right? Seriously, it’s not that hard to crush a bug - or swat an annoying fly.

But have we ever thought how easy it is to bring them to life? Kill an ant and it's dead forever, it’ll never come back – do we ever think of that? Of course it’s just an ant, but that’s why it’s amazing. Something so small, yet once we kill it, it’s gone, and we can’t even bring it's life back. We have such power over death sometimes. But that’s the reason we have to be so cautious over that authority - because we don’t have such a power over life.

And on a bigger scale, look at us. It can be so easy to die: crashes, poison, diseases, guns, knives, etc. Humans have the power to kill & and humans can be easy to kill. But how dare anyone kill for no reason, especially since when someone’s dead, they’re dead. They can’t be brought back to life – the same person, the same personality, the same time. It's crazy how some people abuse this, but it’s just because they don’t understand.

When I was younger, I heard all the time about people dying. “Three people died this morning in a fatal car crash,” the emotionless radio would tell me, or “Hundreds died in a gun fight” in another country, the journalist would write. And I’d be like, okay. They died. I don’t know them, they’re people - faceless people - and they’re far away.

But, if I really thought about it, I’d be amazed at how strangely terrible the news was that I heard. I mean, I’d imagine that people who died in the news, were people I knew. One was the loyal friend; always there for me, the other had the biggest heart, another always joking around & lighting up the dullest party. And if we think about hearing people die, if we imagine them like that, we can grasp reality just a bit more. Someone’s gone who will never come back, that unique personality lost forever. We need to recognize what power we have over death.

Because life – it’s so precious.

(let me know what you think!)