The boy sat in his customary seat by the window, staring out at the bleak grayness of the river and to the miniaturized hustle and bustle beyond that, as little people in their little cars and trucks scurried about their daily activities

Life goes on

The young man sat in his customary seat by the window, staring out at the bleak grayness of the river and to the miniaturized hustle and bustle beyond that, as little people in their little cars and trucks scurried about their daily activities. He smiled to himself as he thought how much it reminded him of the ant farm that Mrs. O’Hara, his 4^th grade teacher, had brought in to class one day. He’d eagerly joined with his classmates as they clustered around the glass case, their small faces intently studying the chaos seemingly playing itself out in front of them.

Then, just as now, he’d found that by focusing on a single individual, he’d been able to make some sense of it’s purpose and it’s contribution in the context of the greater whole. Back then it had been seeing single ants displaying Herculean feats of strength and determination such as dragging leaf parts many times their own size and weight, resolutely carrying out their pre-programmed agenda. Now, he let his gaze drift until it settled on a small delivery truck bearing a garishly colored logo on its side. He found himself wondering about the contents of the truck; what they were, where they had come from, where they were going and whom they were for?

As he watched the truck’s painstakingly slow progress through the snarl of the evening traffic, the stop-go-stop of the countless traffic lights, his thoughts progressed to its driver. Who was that person sitting patiently in line, deflecting the heat, noise and frustration so that it flowed around him rather than through him, negating its slow but cumulatively damaging effects? He found himself asking more questions to which he had no answers. Where had the driver been and where was he going? Did he have a family to return to and if so, did the thought fill him with eagerness or apprehension?

His thoughts returned to that classroom of fifteen years ago and he remembered what had happened when Mrs. O’Hara had left the room for a moment. Encouraged by his peers, he’d decided to try a controlled experiment by introducing a pencil to the ant’s environment. While one of his friends had kept a lookout for their teacher’s return, he’d carefully removed the clear plastic lid from the ant farm and balancing on the table, he’d lowered the pencil into their world. Gingerly at first, he’d used the tip to interfere with single ants; flicking them over so that he could watch them struggle to right themselves. Next, he’d pinned their precious leaves in place like specimens, so no matter how hard they had tried, the ants had been helpless to move any further without sacrificing their loads.

While these experiments had satisfied his curiosity, it had not satisfied that of his classmates. They had wanted more of a spectacle, had wanted to see how the ants would react to a man-made disaster. Galvanized by their taunting vocal remonstrations (and past experience of how they tended to become painfully physical remonstrations if he didn’t do as they wished), he’d repositioned the pencil in his hand and brought it down on the ant farm. Looking back on this now, replaying his actions in his mind, it reminded him of how Brutus had once brought down a dagger into Caesar’s chest; viewing those actions an adult perspective, he saw how they also carried the betrayal of Brutus’ actions.

Seeing the ant’s scurrying to regain their equilibrium and the baying of the other children for more, he’d withdrawn the pencil and brought it down into the sandy gravel again. This time he’d used more force, resulting in the collapse of the tunnels within the ant farm and the increasing agitation the ants, their activities becoming more frenzied and disturbed. His performance was vocally supported which made him do it again, each blow further decimating the ant’s environment.

At this point Mrs. O’Hara had returned to the classroom, her arms full of colored pencils and photocopies. She’d stood frozen to the spot for a moment, taking in the scene playing out before her eyes, before reacting with a scream and the clatter of pencils and paper hitting the floor. No one had heard her re-entry and the children panicked at the sound of her voice, desperately trying to be anywhere other than in her line of vision and to distance themselves from the events. In the resultant melee, as children scurried back to their own desks, the boy had lost his precarious balance and toppled headfirst to the floor, taking the ant farm with him.

He’d lain dazed for a moment, the shards of shattered plastic beneath him, until Mrs. O’Hara had lifted him to his feet by means of his ear. The intensity of her anger, the flecks of spittle that had projected from her lips as she berated him for his callousness and cruelty, seemed to wash over him. He had stared intently down at his feet as she laid out his punishments for all to hear; the visit to the principle, (along with the unspoken, but clearly intimated, beating that he’d receive there) and the letter home to his parents detailing his activities (and the allusion to the further beatings that he knew very well that he would receive at the hands of his father). As he was led out of the room and semi-marched / semi-dragged to the principal’s office, he’d looked down one last time at the scattered remains of the ant farm. He was amazed to see that even amidst the almost total destruction of their environment, the ants were returning to their own equilibrium; marshalling their energies as they gathered their scattered eggs, returned to their foraging for food and building materials.

It was an image that had stayed with him long after the pain and shame of his punishments had long been forgotten. As he looked back over the river, seeking out and finding the delivery truck again (it had moved all of 100 yards while he’d been lost in his memories), he wondered what would happen if something came along to shake its world up. Maybe not a giant pencil descending from the sky, randomly stabbing at buildings, highways, vehicles (though he did smile at the image – like something out of a movie by Terry Gilliam) but how about a natural disaster such as a twister. He played this out in his mind and concluded that it would be exactly the same as that day in the classroom all those years ago. While people might struggle to understand the bigger picture (the "why are we here?", the "what is it all about?"), they seem pre-programmed to try and deal with adversity and get on with their lives. Like it did for the ants, life would either return to an approximation of normality or become the new normality. Either way, the young man concluded, life goes on.