Inspire: Ants, The Real MVPs

Inspiration comes from the weirdest places sometimes. Most of the time it just sneaks up on you without you even noticing until you are inspired to go out and achieve more. And sometimes your inspiration can come from one of the smallest living thing known to man: ANTS. Yup you read right, ANTS. I bet you never thought you would see the day when someone would say something as crazy as that, right?

I sat outside my house on Saturday evening enjoying a cob of corn and some native pear, oka n’ube as my Ibo people would call it. I’m sorry brothers and sisters in diaspora, I didn't mean to make you salivate, it's just the season back here in Nigeria. Anyway, back to my story. Some ears of corn made their way to the ground as I ate, some big and some smaller than the others.

I was getting ready to pick up the ones that had fallen, when I saw something that amused me into pausing on that. I saw a single worker ant trying to move the biggest ear of corn. It was a sight to behold, I actually laughed at an ant, wondering how it intended to achieve such an unachievable feat on its own. It was funny but it actually stopped me from flicking it away, I was interested in how it was going to achieve this mission impossible. To my amazement before I could look up and look back down there was an army of worker ants marching down in a straight line towards the stray ears of corn.

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 Now I was the one being laughed at by the ants, LOL. Amazing is the only word that kept coming to mind, it’s the only way to explain what was happening. I kept wondering how they communicated to each other, ‘hey guys, over here, there is food to be carried to the store, we’ve got to save for when famine hits or when the rains come, this food is not going to store itself’. Amazing. Slowly and steadily and with a lot of determination and hard work, they achieved that which my human mind thought impossible for them to achieve.

They split themselves up into teams, with small teams of about three ants carrying small ears of corn and the bigger team of about ten ants carrying the bigger ear. As each ant came it joined a team to make the burden lighter. They kept coming until the area was completely clean, as in; there was no sign that corn was ever eaten in the area. Amazing right, again how did they call off the troops, stopping them from heading to an already conquered area and directing them to a new area to be conquered. Amazing.

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Humans have a lot to learn from ants: from working as a team, to hard work, to determination. Nothing is as impossible as it seems, if you put your mind into it. I learned that day from ants that we can achieve whatever we want both collectively and as individuals. We all want Nigeria to be better; we can work together like ants to achieve that. Our president cannot do it alone, I’m not a fan of Buhari as a person, but I learned that day that I have to put aside my personal dislike for him and work and pray with him towards making Nigeria great. I’m sure one or two of those ants had beef, LOL, ‘look at her, what’s she feeling like, because she bought the iAnt2000 we wouldn’t hear word’. But they put that beef aside, because the store had to be filled with food for the rainy day. A better Nigeria is the common dream, so we have to put aside our differences and work towards achieving that together.

In our personal lives it can be applied too. We might have dreams that we have been pushing to the curb, afraid to start chasing. There is no time like now; this is the time to start. You might be able to do it on your own in your first try, you might have to keep trying, your might even need other people to help bring this dream to life. Whatever the case maybe, its important that you try, with hard work, determination and working as a team where needed, you can achieve anything, just try.

Ants are the real MVPs (most valuable player), I might just say ANTS when next I’m asked who my role model is, LOL.