By Paul Caruso  » There was once an ant who stood by the door. He did not do much else. Thinking didn’t even occur to him. He wasn’t thinking about the work he had to do. He wasn’t thinking about why he stood at the door. But he was thinking about nothing, which is the best thing for a lonely ant standing by the door to think about.

The other ants thought about things, and they talked as much as they thought. They thought about the ant who stood by the door. They thought about the Queen. They thought about their work. The latter two were natural things to think about for an ant.

Thinking about the ant who stood by the door was natural, too. I mean, who could ignore him? All day, he just stood by that door. He didn’t look around or tap his feet like an idle worker. For how can one be an idle worker if one has never worked?

Ah, but he is a worker ant. So it is in his blood. His ant blood. Well, actually it’s in his DNA. His ant DNA. His ant DNA which is in his ant blood. This is the same DNA as every other worker ant. But not every other worker ant stood by the door.

The Queen hated the ant who stood by the door and wanted to get rid of him no matter the cost. Unfortunately, the cost was too high, so the Queen abandoned hope. The cost? The ant who stood by the door never worked, but he did his job of standing by the door. Getting rid of him would only mean getting a new ant who stood by the door. The Queen hated the ant who stood by the door, but she didn’t hate the ant, she hated that there had to be an ant who stood by the door, and she expressed her frustration to the ant who stood by the door. The ant, however, did not even notice her. This is why she hated him. But he was the best at what he did.

The ant who stood by the door was not contributing in any way to antkind, antdom, or the antish way. He was more of a necessity. Maybe more necessary than the ants who actually did work. More necessary than the Queen. He had one job and he did it well. No, the job was not standing by the door. It was something much bigger that he had not done yet. And he had not done it well.

Even though the ant who stood by the door had been there, by that door, standing for his whole ant life, the other ants never get used to him. After a while, they started talking less about him, though. After all, how much is there to say about an ant who stands by the door? Nothing much is how much. They made rumours and tall tales up, but since everyone knew no one talked to him, everyone knew no one was right.

And no one knew what would happen next. Think about any point in time that this story would be taking place which would make sense to you. Then think about the very next moment. In that moment, a literal flood of actual water came rushing into the ant hill through the only entrance: the hole in the top. But there was another entrance, and this was used as an exit. The exit was a door. Yes, that’s right kids, the ant escaped through the door, making his first anty movement in the long months of his life. He did not close the door behind him. He let the flood rush through and carry him off. He rode the wave like a surfer would, but he had no surf board. He was an ant.

Anyways, long story short, the ant who formerly stood by the door escaped alive. He didn’t know if any of the other ants, or even if the Queen, had survived the flood. All he knew was that he was alone. But he never thought, so he didn’t know that. And good thing too, because he was wrong. It was only a matter of days until he scurried upon another ant hill. He crawled inside, the worker ants staring at him, and he took his place by the door. He was young again, and everyone was thinking and talking about him. And he thought and talked about nothing.

The funny thing about ants is that for every one human, there are a million ants. So would a million ants have the same impact on the world as one human? If so, how much impact would one ant have on the world? Probably not too much. But, what if one ant could impact a million ants?