Our Right to Make Choices
... or should we be more like ants?
Have you ever watched ants? I mean really studied them? They’re hard-working, self-effacing little creatures. In a strange way, I also find them to be charming.
Someone, probably a toddler, dropped a few cookie crumbs on the ground near the steps where I was sitting and waiting for my daughter one day.
A long line of ants soon showed up behind a single leader to take all of the cookie crumbs, I suppose, to their nest. It was interesting to watch them.
The first ant had to have been a scout. When he found the cookie crumbs, he must have sent out some sort of signal, because within two minutes, an entire line had formed behind him.
Each ant that filed past the crumbs picked one up and then it, too, followed the leader and his entourage who headed off in a different direction.
Were they headed to the nest? They must have been. Start to finish, it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before they were all gone and so were all of the cookie crumbs.
What I found most amazing was, none of the little guys stopped to eat, or break their rank to even sample the cookie crumb they were carrying. They also didn’t seem to question why they were all there, following a leader instead of trying to be one.
Was following a conscious choice, or were they born to be robotic followers, never allowed to choose, or want anything for themselves?
It makes me glad I’m a ‘people’. Although, truth be known, mankind could learn a lot from the lowly ant …
Choices
by C.J. Heck
Life is full of crossroads,
those hard lefts or rights,
soft little pathways,
or curves and turns
going this way or that.
Each way has its own set
of bumps and potholes
and an occasional hairpin turn.
With each choice we learn,
grow and gain in awareness.
Never alone, our guidance
whispers by our side.
I've wondered at times
how my life might have differed
had I taken a different route.
Lord knows I could have used
a few more straight stretches,
but at least I made choices,
some good, some not so good,
but each was perfect
for me at the time, creating
the unique being that is me.
How sad for those
who merely hitchhike along
never daring to choose at all.CJ’s World is reader supported.
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Personal choices have crazy consequences. Some are immediate and some come back to bite us half a lifetime later. We can’t escape choices made by people and groups that we have, or never have had, any direct association with. You may have (or not have ) a conscious philosophy and set of ethics to live by, yet you are not immune to being snared by developing philosophical changes by groups and their ethic, be a member or not. (Remember being drafted?) We are now reaping the rewards of taking our heros from the ranks of CEOs, and financially ept individuals & corporation moral values. (They have them) “It’s just business “ can be an apt metaphor for where we are. Tangled by our own group philosophy. It took a long time to get here. My guess is this revolution started long ago.
I love the story and the poem.