Two ants have been going around the rim of my laptop screen and across it as well as on my desk for the past four hours. I don’t know what they are looking for but they are looking for something. It could not be food because I did sprinkle some but they maneuver around it. It seems ants too are choosy in what they eat.
There is something utterly Zen about watching these two ants crawling around without an apparent purpose. How else do you explain that they have taken several rounds on the rim of my laptop? Life at that scale or for that matter at any scale is eventually devoid of purpose or meaning. I watched these two ants for a couple of hours directly and in the process slowed down my metabolism to a crawl. It is only now that I am back to my normal pace. Hence this post.
While looking at them I had this silly and random question.
Is it racist to say all ants look alike?
Asking on behalf of all aardvarks.
It is conceivable that within colonies of ants, they have a sense of earnest purpose like we humans do. I have read that ants are divided into specific groups with assigned roles. They have their own caste system as it were.
The two ants that I have been observing this morning and which have just suddenly disappeared while writing this sentence ought to have been looking for something on behalf of their colony somewhere in my apartment. I tried asking one of them but it ignored me. It was unaware that I could have crushed it with next to no effort but I do not believe in anticide. (Not a word but coined here.) It is only when they turn out in thousands that they constitute a menace. An occasional one or two have the effect of creating a sense of Zen in me.
Given our anthropocentric obsessions we forget that there are so many parallel sentient worlds that live and thrive on Earth and many of them, right next to us. I admire ants’ gumption in thinking that they can just show up wherever and whenever they please. I mean what’s the point of crawling across my laptop screen several times? Interestingly, at this very moment two ants have returned to my desk. I am not sure if they are the same two ants from earlier. They all look alike to me. Is it racist to say all ants look alike? Asking on behalf of all aardvarks.
P.S.: Just as I was wrapping this post up, one of the ants finally picked up a scrap from food I had strewn three hours ago. It is not just going around on my desk without any specific destination. Silly ant.
