There’s an anthill beside the highway in entrance of my home, and my canine Skipper is decided to pee on it.
About twice every week, Skipper catches me not paying consideration on our stroll and deliberately guides me to the grassless lump subsequent to the pavement. As quickly as he will get in vary, he lifts his leg and blasts this poor ant mound like some kind of bushy demise star raining destruction down from house. The mound crumbles in on itself and tons of of black ants come swarming out into the spray.
This has been happening for months now. I don’t assume Skip is hurting the ants, however between his clomping ft and a steam of urine that has to seem like Niagara falls touchdown on your property for those who’re an ant, their mound will get just about leveled.
After I was youthful, I don’t assume this could trouble me as a result of I wouldn’t have even observed the drama enjoying out on the bottom. Now, nevertheless, I watch the ants scurry to work rebuilding the house that has been yet-again flooded by means of completely no fault of their very own, and I simply… empathize.
Somebody lately advised me that positivity is their faith. They follow and sacrifice within the service of maintaining an unwavering optimistic outlook on the hardships of life. Ever since listening to this, I’ve been excited about changing. I do know it’s not an actual faith, however perhaps we might a minimum of get a cult going. I really feel like all we actually must get began are some pamphlets, a van, and the understanding that dedication like this requires fierce dedication and (generally) sacrifice.
This worldview speaks to me as a result of I’m a perpetual optimist and select to see the great in folks and conditions each time attainable. I’m not, nevertheless, naive to the truth that some issues simply don’t lend themselves to positivity. The universe appears to thrill in often taking one thing now we have labored extremely onerous on and tearing it aside for no good purpose.
I’ve a pal who took her household to Disneyland identical to she had at all times imagined. She received there, received the flu, by no means left the lodge, and has now solely seen Disneyland from the images the remainder of her household took on the journey. I’ve one other pal who has spent his complete life exercising and consuming properly solely to finish up with terrible again issues. I’ve pals who uprooted their total lives to take new jobs they instantly despised, pals who poured all that they had into a wedding that also resulted in divorce, and pals who lived the healthiest life attainable and nonetheless received most cancers.
I do know it’s morbid to say this stuff (and presumably a sin in my new faith/cult), however doing all your finest solely to have life come and degree your own home with a urine stream from the heavens appears to be a normal a part of residing. We must always often remind ourselves of that so we don’t consider we’re doing one thing incorrect.
My intuition at this level within the letter is to modify tone and swoop in with my new positivity cult. I’m not going to try this although. I believe there’s nothing worse than being an ant coated in canine pee and having somebody inform you to “look on the brilliant facet.”
Everybody has to determine methods to course of their very own hardships, and never all hardships are created equal. I’m not writing to you in the present day to inform you to suck it up or to seek out the silver lining within the unfair factor that occurred to you. All I’m writing to say in the present day is that when you have had hardship rain down on you for no purpose, I’m actually sorry. I do know it’s terrible and it makes you’re feeling completely powerless. I want issues like this didn’t occur to good folks.
I don’t have a solution about methods to make this stuff okay or to make them not harm. The one recommendation I’ve gotten lately on this topic comes from the ants.
Generally the factor (or the concept of the factor) we love will get destroyed. The one choices now we have when this occurs are to maintain going or not hold going. The ants at all times hold going. Generally they construct the identical anthill again, and generally they construct it very otherwise, and generally they pack up and go construct a brand new anthill elsewhere. However they at all times hold going.
Now, you don’t should take my new cult pamphlets or get into my van (I’m calling it the positivity ad-VAN-tage!), however I do hope you’ll hear me once I say I hope you’ll resolve to maintain going. I hope that, when you’re prepared, you’ll have the energy to attempt to see how issues may truly work out for the higher, how far you’ve come as an individual, and the way a lot stronger you are actually than you ever thought you might be.
When your anthill will get leveled, I hope you’ll hold in there and select to consider there can be higher days forward.
In regards to the photograph: My canine, Skipper, impatiently awaiting his stroll so he might seek out stated ant hill…
