You Don't Understand.

A Tiny Lesson On Finding Peace and Learning to Just Be With.

You don’t understand, and that doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.

            I got caught up watching a very active, small ant this week.

            I was sitting on some rocks in the middle of a stream, making what was supposed to be a quick little stop at the end of a walk before my work day began. Then I noticed a fairly large piece of white-something moving around with the help of an ant, and I couldn’t stop watching what was taking place.

            The tiny black ant was making their¹ way around the rock where golden and brown leaves had fallen from the trees.

            I considered moving the leaves “out of the way” so the ant had a more direct path with their big load, but quickly told myself that I don’t know what is the way of the ant, and therefore I shouldn’t move anything.

So I just sat. Watching and breathing and wondering.

            Sometimes humans have a hard time not intervening, even if they have no idea what is happening and no idea what might actually be helpful. Our interventionist ways can – and have – created a lot of destruction and harm to one another, to many other species, and to the planet in general.

            I have to do something, we might think, something is wrong and I need to make it better.

            We have all heard stories about heroic actions that literally save lives when there is a crisis, for example when a child is choking, or an apartment complex is on fire, or there is a car accident and people need rescued from their vehicles, or a dog has fallen into a rushing river, or a bird has been hit by a car, or someone is being physically harmed or bullied or tormented.

            Many of us have also all heard stories about interventionist actions when an outsider perceived a crisis but their perceptions were at best partial and at worst grossly inaccurate, and they caused great harm. I have a friend whose son is sitting in jail right now because a bystander thought that his conversation and interaction with a loved one was a dangerous domestic fight and they called the police. Now he’s facing charges even though his family has protested and tried to testify on his behalf.

The perception of the outsider was likely shaped by many things, including the fact that this young man is Black and living in the South, he wears his hair long and in braids, he was near his home which is a working-class residential area that borders the local university campus where most students are white, and there is often a felt tension between the people who populate campus during the school year and those who live in the town year-round and usually do not have an opportunity to access the campus as a student.

This is a person, his family would argue, who wouldn’t even hurt an ant.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a famous Buddhist monk and writer, would say that inaccurate perceptions create suffering, and that all perceptions are inaccurate. I think this is the most crucial bit of information I carry around with me every single day. It’s my complete understanding that it is very likely that I don’t understand.

But these are not the kinds of interventionist stories I’m talking about today.

I’m talking about the mundane, everyday living when we are walking around on this planet and observe other species living their lives, yet we interpret their lives from our narrow and sometimes dangerous human perspective.

This ant that I was watching was remarkable. They held the white object (was this part of a moth’s wing? a bit of a paper towel?) over their head with their front legs and traveled around on the rock and leaves with their back four legs. I watched them, several different times, walking upright on their two hind legs as they pushed the white object higher in the air.

I didn’t even know ants could walk on two legs.

When they came to a fairly large leaf (this is when I almost moved the leaf but resisted the interventionist urge), they turned their body around so their back end tucked up under the leaf and they moved backwards to pull the white object under the leaf. Step by step, the white object scrunched down into a size small enough to fit under the leaf.

I thought maybe the ant was going to stay under this leaf, so I kept watching.

I don’t understand what this ant is doing, I thought to myself.

Then the back end of the ant scooted out from beneath the leaf on the other side and pop! The white fabric-y object-thing popped up in dramatic fashion, almost like a parachute or a helium balloon or a flexible umbrella.

A few ants passed by and didn’t seem to give this event any special attention, but I was fascinated.

What is this ant doing? I wondered.

I’m pretty sure I also furrowed my brow and squinted my eyes, but I didn’t move any closer. Can you imagine just minding your own business and a giant – a literal giant – came along and put their face down at you?

They don’t seem to be headed in a particular direction, I think. In fact, the ant had moved around in what seemed to be some smaller and larger circles.

The ant traveled into a crease where two big rocks met, and then back out of the crease.

They traveled away from and back toward a large leaf several times.

They stood upright, pushing the white object farther into the air, and walked on two legs.

They turned around backwards, moved sideways, and occasionally would pause.

Is this ant playing? I wondered. Is this a dance?

Ants playing or dancing aren’t really something I had heard about before. In fact, I had heard many of the stories that maybe you have heard about ants: they are hard workers, they help eachother, they are determined, industrious, and so forth.

But those, of course, are just silly human stories made to explain observations of a species with which we cannot communicate.

Humans make up these stories about all non-human species. They like to “humanize” others (which is quite ironic, because we are very good at dehumanizing one another).

Here’s the bottom line: I cannot understand the ant’s activities.

I don’t understand.

And that, my friends, is the appropriate conclusion.

I can not understand and still observe, wonder, and imagine. But I must, I absolutely must, find peace and comfort with my not understanding.

Sometimes we humans work so hard to understand, but our capacity for understanding even our own species is very narrow and limited. Our capacity for understanding other species is, well, even less developed and perhaps simply impossible.

So if not understanding, then what do we humans seek beyond ourselves?

Perhaps we seek a way to be and to be with. But this is more of a doing than a seeking, isn’t it?  

And maybe, just maybe, sitting on some rocks in the middle of a stream on a chilly Autumn morning watching an ant is just the practice in doing, and being, that I needed this week.

1. I use they as a way to talk about non-human animals and other life without projecting our human notions of gender onto other species. Have you ever noticed that “he” is almost a universally accepted way to talk about a dog, for example, when one doesn’t know what their sex is? Or, perhaps even worse, we use “it”? This is another funny little thing humans do as we make up stories about species that we can never truly understand. They isn’t perfect in this use, at least I don’t think, but it does help us get out of being stuck in using he/she/it.