We Are the Ants

by Shaun David Hutchinson

Your entire sense of self-worth is predicated upon your belief that you matter, that you matter to the universe. But you don’t. Because we are the ants.

human beings, we’re born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.

I always sat at the bow, dangling my feet over the side, letting the water tickle my toes as we sped through the intracoastal toward the deep sea. I loved how the sun and salt spray perfused my skin, filling me with the memory of light. God surely meant for humans to live like that. He hadn’t intended for us to wither into desiccated husks in front of brightly lit screens that leeched away our summer days one meme at a time.

That’s the problem with memories: you can visit them, but you can’t live in them.

Finally I said, “What if I don’t give a shit about the world?” Diego gathered our trash and frowned. “I’d say that’s pretty fucking sad.” “Why?” “Because the world is so beautiful.”

“When the days are darkest, dear, you latch on to happiness wherever you find it.”

Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long dead and buried deep.

We are merely pieces of a grander design, even more insignificant than I imagined. When the earth ceases to be, all those stars will shine on. Our deaths will mean nothing to them.

Diego laughed, and I wanted to preserve the sound in a jar for the days when laughter was scarce.

Life isn’t fair. That’s what we tell kids when they’re young and learn that there are no rules, or rather that there are but only suckers play by them. We don’t reassure them or give them tools to help them cope with the reality of life; we simply pat them on the back and send them on their way, burdened with the knowledge that nothing they do will ever really matter. It can’t if life’s not fair.

If life were fair, the smartest among us would be the wealthiest and most popular. If life were fair, teachers would make millions, and scientists would be rock stars. If life were fair, we’d all gather around the TV to hear about the latest discovery coming out of CERN rather than to find out which Kardashian is pregnant.

“Because sometimes it’s easier to start over with a clean slate than to drag the baggage of your past with you wherever you go.”

“Because the past isn’t important. History is just a way of keeping score, but it doesn’t have to be who we are.”

“We’re not words, Henry, we’re people. Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose.”

It seems silly to worry about the arbitrary moment some person long dead declared to be the end of one year and the beginning of another, as if our attempts to divide time into meaningful chunks actually mean anything. People wait for the countdown to tell them that it’s okay to believe in themselves again. They end each year with failure, but hope that when the clock strikes twelve, they can begin the new year with a clean slate. They tell themselves that this is the year things will happen, never realizing that things are always happening; they’re just happening without them.

It doesn’t matter, because one way or another we’re all going to die. A blood clot could lodge in my brain and kill me ten minutes from now; a car could hit you while you’re walking your dog. It doesn’t matter. We could all die, the world could end, and the universe would simply carry on. A hundred billion years from now, no one will exist who remembers we were space boys or chronic-masturbating alcoholics or science teachers or ex-cons or valedictorians. When we’re gone, time will forget whether we swapped spit with strangers. It will forget we ever existed.

We remember the past, live in the present, and write the future.

The universe may forget us, but our light will brighten the darkness for eons after we’ve departed this world. The universe may forget us, but it can’t forget us until we’re gone, and we’re still here, our futures still unwritten. We can choose to sit on our asses and wait for the end, or we can live right now. We can march to the edge of the void and scream in defiance. Yell out for all to hear that we do matter. That we are still here, living our absurd, bullshit lives, and nothing can take that away from us. Not ...