The Ant Oracle
You find yourself in a bright sunroom filled with plants and lush greenery. Late morning light streams into the clear windows, shining through leaves. The whole room exudes a peaceful, happy glow. You walk the perimeter, admiring plants and breathing in the fresh green oxygen filling the space. In the far corner, your attention is drawn to an enormous rubber tree plant. It’s tall as you, growing large in a heavy ceramic pot. It looks like it’s been there, standing solidly in that very spot for a long time - maybe its entire life.
As you take in the rubber tree plant, small bits of dirt go flying out of its planter and you can see that it’s…moving? Yes it’s rocking off the ground, just ever so slightly. You can’t explain it, but you know you need to step closer to see what’s going on. There’s something important for you happening with this rubber tree plant right here, right now.
You approach the plant and stand right up next to new leaf tendrils unfolding at its top center. There’s that tiny rocking of the pot again, there’s the dirt flying. Stooping over to inspect more closely, there’s a miniscule flash of red in repetitive motion. And that’s when you see it: the ancient spirit of a winged ant, the same size as any ant you’ve ever seen, is pushing and punching at the plant’s base like it’s at boxing practice. It pauses to give you a knowing look before landing a punch that, impossibly, tips the ceramic planter over - spilling dirt, rubber plant, and all onto the ground.
You have found The Ant oracle, and it has a story to share with you today.
The Ant oracle says:
Conventional wisdom was never meant for you. For many, it can be helpful. General consensus helps them to move through life: it’s how they make decisions, stay on course, get out and do things in the world, remain to true to an ethical compass, navigate relationships, make plans for the future, etc.
But for you, conventional wisdom is most often a hindrance. It probably doesn’t even seem very wise a lot of the time. What is conventionally agreed upon as the way the world works, doesn’t work for you. What everyone tells each other about how to live a life, keeps your life smaller than it wants to be. Basic advice often prevents you from your full potential. Accepted beliefs frequently ask you to accept fears that belong to other people. Common knowledge would have you believe that you can’t do the incredibly epic things that you are fully capable of doing.
You are wired to accomplish things far beyond the ordinary. Because you are here, you already know this. Not everyone is ready to do the extraordinary, or will ever want to try it. But you are not everyone.
You have a different kind of determination and a higher level of optimism than most. That combination makes you able to accomplish feats that everyone else would call inconceivable. It allows you to triumph over obstacles that, to others, seem insurmountable.
For you, it’s all in a day’s work. You don’t move the big immoveable thing only once in a while. You go up against the un-moveable, the unshakeable, the unreasonable, and the unattainable all the time. And not only do you go toe-to-toe with what is supposed to be out of the question, you actually make it happen - even if it takes you a few tries.
People tell you that it’s impossible, and then you go and do it anyway. You prove them wrong over and over again. You show people what it means to push outside of the constraints around what the world is supposed to be, just because everybody said so. Turns out that “everybody” is wrong quite a lot of the time.
Just by doing what you set out to do and not caring if it makes sense to anyone else, you remind people of all the times when something was considered un-doable and yet someone did it. When they climbed that sheer cliff face free solo. When they swam that distance between continents that no one else had. When they built an internationally acclaimed art brand out of painted dots and lines. When they straight up refused to go down in boxing ring where anyone else would have been down for the count in a matter of seconds. When they banded together and saved the town, the city, the farm, the day.
And when it turned out that maybe they’d even been doing the unprecedented all along. They did the unbelievable thing and didn’t even know that they weren’t supposed to be able to.
An ant doesn’t know that it’s supposed to be too small to lift up to 50 times its own weight. It doesn’t consider that that would be equivalent to a human lifting an elephant or full-size truck and then some. The ant doesn’t say to itself, that sounds infeasible so why even try it. It just…does it. It just lifts the thing it wants to lift. Like it always has. Like it always will.
And you know what else they said about the ant. The famous song said that everyone knows that an ant can’t move a rubber tree plant. “Just what makes that little old ant think he'll move that rubber tree plant?” They said it couldn’t be done, meanwhile the ant was already in the middle of knocking over that plant.
You know something about that, too. You are like the cliff climber and the long-distance swimmer, the internationally renowned artist, the boxer who wouldn’t quit, the town savers, and the ant. The particular rubber plants you take on are your own, but you are of that same ilk.
They say to you: You can’t.
Meanwhile, your foot is still mid-air, having just toppled over your obstacle as you say: Watch, here goes another rubber tree plant.
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About the Artist
Bailey Lewis is an experiential storytelling artist (MFA, University of South Carolina) who combines words, images, and reimagined materials to create intuitive story experiences. Her art has been exhibited and published internationally, and she is the author of award-winning stories which have been featured in The Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Visit the Bailey Sends Word Story Studio site for more about Bailey’s work.