"Young ants, like young people, wish to set up for themselves in a new home. They spread their fine wings. Off they fly!
They swarm as the bees do. As they rise high from the earth, they drift off on the wind. Very many of them tire out and die or are blown into the water and are drowned.
A few live and settle on places fit for a new ant-hill. It is the mother or queen ant who chooses the new home.
When she has found the right place, what do you think she does? She takes off her wings, as she does not care to fly any more. The ant does not tear off her wings. She unhooks them, and lets them fall away, and does not seem to miss them. "
– Seaside and Wayside No. 2, Julia McNair Wright, 1888
Brendan read me these words this week and I have chewed them over and over in my head. It is humbling, really, how she commits to her mission so fully, without reserve. Like Cortez burning the ships.
She doesn't thrash against her sandy walls, bemoaning the smallness, the hidden nature of her empire. She doesn't gaze out of the hill wondering what might be happening inside other colonies. Have they constructed differently? Better? Are they larger? More productive? She doesn't wonder if she should have been a worker or a drone or… who knows what. She isn't blown about on the winds of curiosity and discontent.
No.
She settles in and shapes one small but complex and remarkably rich world, where she is completely indispensable, where what she does matters today and tomorrow.
Starry Sky Journal 
Perfect reminder…merci
Oh Amen. I needed to hear that today.
Looking for the “like” button ~ and glad there isn’t one. I don’t just like this meditation, I love it. Contentment and duty can and should be hand in glove.
Kim, we have been revisiting this book ourselves lately, and I was struck with the way that the queen just goes about her business, but I hadn’t thought about it as thoroughly as you have–and this fits into our current study of Ecclesiastes as well–looking to the cares set before us and enjoying each day, coupled with the fear of God, this is the best of life!