This is a story that I hold very dear to me. It has been redone many times. It took quite a while to finish, but nevertheless I hope you like it.

Ants

By Lance Sweets
The Epilogue of "Bones: The Heart of the Matter"

If I stood on the red rigged chair in my one room prison looking closely out of a small opening in the wooden wall, I could see pieces of the world outside.

Children playing.

People laughing.

Couples holding hands.

The Highlight of my day was in the afternoons, when a nearby neighbor read to her child. She read stories of knights, princesses, and dragons. I loved them,

I couldn't fathom happiness. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. It was hard to understand how people could be happy when all I felt was cold, hunger, and fear.

'What made life so good when the world around me was miserable?' I would ask myself. 'Was happiness just a fairy tale, with Knights and dragons that spat fire?'

My life was filled with cold lonely nights, heartaches, and unbearable trials. I was beaten, bruised, and belittled by the people who should love me the most. But, I learned things. I learned to say nothing. I learned to comply. I learned to survive.

When I was young, I would often lay awake asking myself life's most important questions. While I huddled in a soft, but tattered blue blanket that never kept me warm, in a corner of a wretched mildewed room, I still remember watching the beady black ants scurry around the floor picking up crumbs off of the ground.

'What is life?' I asked myself. 'What made those ants so strong, so united when they were so small and helpless?'

Each night I asked myself those questions over and over, but that one nagging question was, 'Why those ants were so strong?'

I watched their actions. When an ant was hurt others would help them. When a crumb was too heavy to carry... other ants would help. They were always together, never alone.

Why was that? Why did the ants do that? I guess that is why I became a shrink.

Eventually, I was taken from out of my house, and placed in the foster system because my living conditions were so...
"Not fit for such a good and handsome boy like you." my social worker, Mrs. Walker, would tell me. I still recall her Ronald Mc Donald red hair, long cheap pink plastic fingernails, and the bright floral dresses she wore. She also smelt of... what the kids described as, "Old Person" Though for me, the smell was soothing.

At first I was standoffish and fearful. I would shy away from touch, I just figured that the same misery would follow me.

I would sit alone, mostly in the cafeteria. I would slump down, and eat my food. I had been alone most of my life I didn't know anything about friendship. The only time I had seen it were the glimpses through the wooden slats.

I think my real view of a new life came through Mrs. Walker's son, a seven-year-old boy. I still remember very vividly. I was in the bright cafeteria, sitting alone at a large wooden table when he came walking towards me,

"Hi! My name is Damion Walker!" He shouted very exuberantly. His hair was a musty brown color, and freckles filled his smiling face. "Do ya wants to come to the lib'ary with me. We cans reads some books. I am loads a smart!"

For the first time in a while I looked up. "What is a lib'ary?" I asked.

Damion smiled, "Well, its has tons and tons of books. I like the ones with knights and dragons!"

I looked up shocked. This was something I knew. I had heard these books before, and loved them. They were better then anything in the world to me. It was someplace I could escape to when I was lonely. These stories had given me strength, companionship and adventure. But, mostly I got to a world beyond my basement. "Really?" I asked.

I remember walking into the library with Damion. I looked up in amazement at the thousands of books, and cracked a small smile. I grabbed a book off one from the shelves and opened it up carefully. I was confused.

"Damion, what are these?" I said pointing to the page.

"Letters. They make the words that you speak. Do ya know how to read?"

"No"

"Do ya wants to learn?"

"Yes."

Reading with Damion became my favorite past time. It was a wonderful experience that opened my mind. I caught on fast, but at first I struggled with some story lines in books, especially the concept of Dick, Jane, and their dog Spot.

One day, I was reading the book "Saint George and the Dragon," when I noticed a book on a shelf. I put my book down and stood on my toes and stretched to reach the book. When I pulled the red book down, I gasped. What I was holding in my hand was a book about ants.

I devoured every page of that book, reading to understand the question that I had been wondering all along. I read about how other ants teach other ants to find food. I learned they shared food that they found by eating it and keeping it in their stomach. I thought it was really gross. I searched throughout the book trying to find out why, but the answer I found was only instincts. It didn't make much sense and the answer wasn't sufficient for me.

I began love it at the orphanage. I loved the smell of the hot breakfast pancakes that gave me the filling of fullness, the touch of their soft blankets and poofy mattresses that actually kept you warm, the silly jokes that me and Damion would tell... mostly about why girls have cooties.

Mrs. Walker gave me a gift for my birthday, an ant farm. I had never gotten a gift before. When I asked her why the ants worked and helped each other out, she smiled and squeezed my cheek, "Lance, I think that you will find out soon enough."

Eventually a home was found for me to live in. I was sent on my way. I remember feeling terrified while I carried my old, blue, worn suitcase and ant farm down the hall. I admired, all the things I would miss, while I gently stroked the wooden railing by my side.

Mrs. Walker and Damion walked by me. I glanced up at them, and felt my eyes start to water. I was a small boy, who was used to being called names, spat in the face, beaten and abused. I thought that this home might be the same. I wanted to stay. I wanted to feel safe.

I looked down at the ground. I felt the tears well up in my eyes, I sniffed to hold them back. Mrs. Walker spoke softly, I still remember the words that she told me when she hugged me.

"Lance, the reason why the ants work together and help each other out is because of selflessness. No matter how small, or insignificant something seems to be, with a helping hand, weak becomes strong. Even in the smallest of places, when you help someone, you care for that person. That is how you become stronger. Through love."


I found out that my thinking as a child has evolved, as I became an adult. I am not a victim anymore, I am a person responsible for my actions, and I make my own weather. For years I had a wonderful mother and father who loved me unconditionally. My mother and I would lay on the bed while she read to me about knights and dragons. My father and me played games of basketball along with other sports. Damion came occasionally with Mrs. Walker to see how I was doing. They were all kind and wonderful people. They saved my life through love. They helped me, and taught me things that I will never forget.

My parents helped me through college, so I could do what I always wanted, being a Sociologist, so I could help others just like how others helped me.

Oddly enough, I didn't find the answer to my question from studying ant instinct. It wasn't something a person can learn from a book. I learned these valuable life's lessons from my parents and the Walker's affection and kindheartedness.

What makes life so good when everything goes wrong?

Now I know. Life is not so much based on self-realization, but is more about self-transcendency. In other words it is not about what you can do for yourself, it's what you can do for others. Once this lesson is learned, you also understand by helping others, you help yourself.

...THE END...