We have red ants, the big ones. I’m sort of partial to them. They mostly mind their own business. They trundle around picking up seeds, carrying them back to the nest. They make long highways in the grass which really speaks to the power of repetition because they have tiny, tiny feet, yet thousands of ants walking the same path make a path. That’s pretty cool.

They also seem to have a share and share alike attitude. I might see them walking all around under foot as they forage and even up close to their mound, but they’re okay with me walking around unlike their fire ant brethren who take great umbrage if they find you anywhere close to their nest. The big red ants are like, we’ve got work to do and I suppose you do too, so let’s get at it.

As a society, I know they’re blissfully unaware of what’s going on around them in the world. They communicate with one another, but they’re not sitting around their TVs in the tunnels wondering about us. I suspect most humans wish they could go about their lives in much the same fashion, unbridled by concern of any sort. But that’s not the real world. We’re in it. We know it. We need to participate. We hate it. But we do it. Even though, just like the ants, we make paths through the woods that eventually become highways.