Antness

In the early 1990s, I was making lots of compost. I have never been as content as I was when gathering material, tending the piles, sifting, giving away, and using my finished compost. The contentment I felt is very similar, maybe identical to, what I imagine an ant experiences when being an ant.

I've not read a huge amount about about ants, but two books I've found interesting and informative are E.O. Wilson's Ants and Deborah Gordon's Ants at Work.

Finding work that makes you content and doing that work is something I call antness. It is being in the groove, feeling comfortable and subtly fulfilled with the work.

I suspect this is how an ant feels as she scouts for food or helps excavate a new tunnel or chamber. It's a real pisser to be pulled away from that sense of contented work. Maybe this is part of the reason they get so angry when their nest is disturbed.

I still make compost, but not at nearly the same scale, and when I work in the garden, I have this nagging feeling that I ought to be writing something about the horible things being done to animals and why it's so screwed up and something about the sort of person who regularly hurts or kills others, or causes them harm by doing things that disturb others' piece of mind and interfere with them fulfilling their purpose.