One morning I wasted nearly an hour watching a tiny ant carry a huge feather across my back terrace. Several times it was confronted by obstacles in its path and after a momentary pause it would make the necessary detour. At one point the ant had to negotiate a crack in the concrete about 10mm wide. After brief contemplation the ant laid the feather over the crack, walked across it and picked up the feather on the other side then continued on its way.
I was fascinated by the ingenuity of this ant, one of God’s smallest creatures. It served to reinforce the miracle of creation. Here was a minute insect, lacking in size yet equipped with a brain to reason, explore, discover and overcome. But this ant, like the two-legged co-residents of this planet, also shares human failings. After some time the ant finally reached its destination – a flower bed at the end of the terrace and a small hole that was the entrance to its underground home. And it was here that the ant finally met its match. How could that large feather possibly fit down that small hole? Of course it couldn’t. So the ant, after all this trouble and exercising great ingenuity, overcoming problems all along the way, just abandoned the feather and went home.
The ant had not thought the problem through before it began its epic journey and in the end the feather was nothing more than a burden. Isn’t life like that! We worry about our family, we worry about money or the lack of it, we worry about work, about where we live, about all sorts of things. These are all burdens – the things we pick up along life’s path and lug them around the obstacles and over the crevasses that life will bring, only to find that at the destination they are useless and we can’t take them with us.
Author Unknown
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s really true..a lot of times we keep on worrying on what happened to our life.. but in the end of our journey..It’s only our self that we need to bring back to our home…
Nice story realistic
Nice
The things we carry throughout the life are never burden. That is the life. The wisdom of our inability to carry it to the end turns it in to the burden. It is so tragic.
I like it. It is a very heart touching story. It express that love is immortal. Love never die.
Chai! That’s so heart touching story. But the feather also helped the ant somehow.
I like the notion that ants think. It reminds me the story ‘how much land does a person need’ by trosty.
Wow what a cute story
The moral lesson is we have to work for our temporal needs in this world, but we have also to work harder for our eternal life for we can’t bring with us our wealth when we die.
Nice story. Lesson: always start with the end in mind.
Speechless
We are temporarily in this world… As long as we feel contented we will leave this world without burden…What we earn from the world we return to it in the end….^^
Wonderful message, yes we often forget the truth.
This is incredibly the most heart touching story I have ever read. It’s so expressive and matching to our life, we should think of this small creatures, they are barely nothing for lots but they actually so meaningful and have a lot to tell us if we look brightly.
Fantastic story but it should be elaborative and the content should be in simple english which should be understood by children.
Wow! nice story every one should think about it.
Good one
It is just wow….!!
It’s a very nice story.
You can build a mountain from a mold hill but at the end all you get back to is the mold hill.
A very lovely story! Liked it very much