I had never stopped to look at an ant like that before.
It was one of a few. They weren't moving, it was just a worker ant carrying supplies to an anthill who knows where. The interesting thing is that it was drizzling, not too heavy, and I was just waiting for it to reduce drizzle. In the meantime I was entertained with the details: the water droplets, the cold of the wet wind, the little birds sheltered in the flap of the roof of my house.... And then, that ant.
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The route she had chosen to carry her load was very intricate, especially with a weight that was evidently three times her own. It went over a dry fallen branch of an orange tree, then up the stem of the same tree, continued along one of its low branches that stuck to the wall of the house, descended again to the ground and continued over several poorly watered blocks, then climbed again over a pile of dry leaves, returned to the ground, continued in a straight line and got lost in a thicket.
While I was detailing her, I noticed that on several occasions she lost her balance and with it, her valuable load, which was large and disproportionate to her own size and weight. However, in each fall she would simply get up, return to the place where her load had been and again making her best effort, she would pick it up and resume her march. She did this, as far as I could count, about four times.
I thought about the success of an anthill. Thinking about the idea, I noticed that ants are instinctively industrious. The curious thing is that none of them claim leadership. True, they have a queen, but she is only queen in the mere sense of being a mother and laying eggs. So her indispensable role is reproduction.
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That ant forced me to conclude how different many things would be if a good part of intelligent humans decided to be as tenacious, as stubborn in the fulfillment of a purpose and as recalcitrant with adversities as that unnoticed ant. Each one of them is not concerned about who has done their job and who has not, nor about who is doing it well or badly, and much less about wanting to impose themselves or command over the others.
And what impressed me the most was the atomic effort that each one of them makes to fulfill her role. I thought to myself: "And.... What if each member of the family could learn from that simple ant? What if a father concentrated more on his essential role instead of demanding more from his wife or children? What if the wife did the same? What if the children did the same? What would labor relations be like in such an environment?"
I ended up observing, as if it were a vision, that only incalculable success awaits those who would imitate the simple, humble and silent example of an insignificant ant