What we could learn from ants

An essay by Chad Schomber

You crouch at the curb. The rain has left the asphalt wet enough to shine. Tiny ants haul grains of sand coated in flakes of everything: plastic wrapper bits, crumbled leaf, an old candy shell brighter than traffic lights. You don’t need fancy words. You just need to watch. They’re not trying to inspire awe. They’re busy.

This is where it starts… noticing. Not with your phone. With your skin. With the pulse of a life not built to be special but built to keep working. That first detail cracks the whole illusion we carry. That significance must glint or roar.

They walk in lines. I once watched as twenty ants formed a bridge between a crumb and the colony. They linked, in live flesh, no architecture, no beams, no plan. Each one only needs to hold on a moment. The next one steps in. In those seconds, they’re a tunnel. Then they let go. Molecule by molecule, they move the world. One moment in motion. Then the next takes over.

We dream about legacy. We tweet about clarity. But we rarely let go. Not really. Not like that. We clutch. We storyboard. We angle. We perform. Ants don’t pause to polish. They just pass things forward, limb to limb, load to colony.

They survive because they adapt. Not because they plan. Not because they fret over consequences. They re-route. When a drop of spilled oil blocks a path, they don’t call a meeting. They change course. A trail forms. A new waypoint becomes permanent. Efficient. Accurate.

You watch that, and you realize how much we overthink. A stranger bumps into you in the coffee line, and you script a speech in your head. The ant turns. Keeps going. That moment of friction vanishes under focus. We could try that. Maybe we’d feel less tangled.

Ants bury the dead. They don’t dismiss them. They carry them away—place to place—until they’re out of sight. Not to avoid emotions. Just because corpses foul the water, and the colony matters more. That gesture—small, solemn—carries a strange dignity. Not romantic. Practical. Necessary. We remove bodies too. We sanitize. We deny. We stage-whisper “it’s not a big deal.” But sometimes it is. Sometimes the small care matters.

There’s a lesson in that. Not to glorify death. Just to recognize it. A body isn’t trauma yet. It’s the ground we all share. The ant doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t give a speech. It just lifts and moves. You feel a twinge. Tiny. Maybe that’s enough.

Some ants are soldiers. They live fast. They push forward until they’re broken. Few moments later they lie upside down, legs curled. Others emerge to fill the gap without drama. But the colony doesn’t falter. There’s no cult of the hero ant. The hero dies and is replaced. The story stays the same.

We elevate the hero. We write hymns. We build statues out of mistakes. And then when the hero drops, the group scatters. We need the anti-hero ant. The one who shows up. Keeps working. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t ask for applause. And isn’t remembered.

Ants share. That crumb is not an exhibit. It’s a doorway. A shared burden woven into a thousand legs. Everything gets distributed. Not equal. Not assured. Just whatever’s needed—as need is found. They balance hunger and duty. They pass messages—no chat threads, no ringing phones, no receipts.

We, with our wallets and subscriptions, carry solitary weight. We count followers. We fret about missing likes. The ants just pass crumbs. Then the crumb is gone. Then there’s another. And that’s enough.

Ants don’t mess with identity. No origin story. No insecurity over where they came from. genetics does that. One line, one name. They don’t dust their resumes. They don’t tweet about how special they are. They just are. Their failure isn’t personal. It’s part of the current.

You almost want to laugh out loud. Because we choke on identity. We build resumes on sand. We replay flaws like verdicts. We hold our history like a scarlet letter. The ant? Doesn’t care. Doesn’t know. Doesn’t judge. Doesn’t parade. Just lives.

This—not identity, but the hiding of it—is a skill. Not a sin. It doesn’t leave a mark. It frees you.

Everything they do is tiny. But the result isn’t. The ant hill is a skyscraper by ant standards. Maze tunnels wide enough for all. Chambers full of fungus they farm. Galleries storing eggs. Side halls for queen’s food. Galleries for larvae. Everything functional. Nothing wasted. They engineer precisely. Without blueprints. Without permits. Without an HOA letter.

We hire architects. We litigate designs for crates. We sign HOA agreements. We frame cover letters to justify why we should be allowed to build a porch. Meanwhile ants just build.

I don’t ask you to become an ant. I’m asking you to watch, crouch down again. Watch them walk over your shoe. Don’t crush them. Just watch. Notice the weight. Notice the coal of instinct they carry under their tiny heads.

Ants whisper in pheromones. But what they do is louder. They don’t lecture. They don’t sign manifestos. They don’t look to camera angles. They leave scent trails while moving. Then follow them back. They kill the unfit. They farm the best. They funnel traffic. They distribute food. They repeat the cycle until it changes. Then repeat again.

There’s poetry in that. A filthy stanza. No fountain pen required. No audience. No marketing gimmick. Just movement.

We admire the engineer ant, the worker ant, the harvester ant. But we don’t build like them. We build personal brands. We build businesses. We build resumes. We build myths. Sometimes the building kills us. But at least we can 'artisanally' self-flagellate. We can craft stakes to impale our shortcomings. The ant can’t.

They exist in fall and flood, drought and feast. They don’t home-school identity. They don’t curate playlists. They endure. They resurface a week later. They keep colonizing. They keep growing. They keep existing. They don’t stop to reposition their souls. They don’t cultivate fame. They don’t agonize over who they are. They just carry on.

That carries an insight. Not an epiphany. A whisper. That maybe the problem isn’t ambition. It’s the equipment. It’s the expectation. That we want to mean more than we do. And then we ruin it by hunting for meaning instead of letting it be carried. Like an ant carrying crumb from outside into order.

Maybe we could. Maybe we should. Just carry, quietly.