Watching the Ants

Packets of Light

These are little packets of light & you need to plant them early in the year & remember to mark where they were because lots of times they look like weeds in the beginning & it's not until later that you see how beautiful they really are.

~Brian Andreas~

It's easy to miss the good stuff if you don't give it time to grow. Part of the problem with living in such fast-paced times is that you don't get the chance to just sit down and be with yourself, spend time alone with nothing but your thoughts, seeing what's growing and shifting and changing.

There's sound and noise and activity everywhere, and if you remove yourself from that, then everyone wants you to feel bad for not being productive enough. There's not much value in the corporate world for the kind of slow-paced quiet that you really need to keep feeling alive.

I remember when I was a kid. I remember walking home from school and stopping to watch ants. It seemed like I watched them for hours, just moving around in their ant-way, picking up impossibly huge things for ants and carrying them from one place to another. And I drop a stick or a leaf or something in the middle of them to see what they'd do about it, and more than anything I just loved my ant-time...not having to do anything or be anywhere, and I still feel the same way.

I don't stop and watch ants on the sidewalk anymore though, but just letting my mind roam around and stretch its legs and get some fresh air - is still my favorite kind of time. Only now I have to schedule it. I think this is one of the reasons I don't feel lonley hardly ever. I so much enjoy the company of myself when I have a chance to experience it.