The Grasshopper and the Ants

Sunday, July 11, 2010
We all know the fable about the grasshopper and the ants. Lately at the cabin, it’s been feeling like we’re both the grasshopper and the ants. We’re trying to bring home the bacon and still have lazy long mornings to eat the bacon (with toast and hash browns and eggs, of course).

All week, the bay has been filled with the sounds of summer vacationers and visitors. Motor boats buzz in and out of the bay, vehicles are always passing by on the windy gravel road behind the cabin, and there are plenty of shrieks and splashes come from the neighbors’ docks as people of all ages jump into the warm lake water. It looked like so much fun. Even with full time jobs and various other commitments, we figured if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. With a week straight of warm sunny days, why not pretend we were on summer vacation, just like everyone else.

So we went fishing in the evenings. (That’s unadulterated excitement in Andy’s eyes.)

I took touristy shots of moose on my way home.

We had picnics and toasted ginormous marshmallows.

Now the weather is clouding over and I’m starting to feel like a guilty little grasshopper. I wonder if I could have spent my time in a slightly wiser manner. After all, yesterday evening was devoted to the pursuit of making a blueberry pie. After supper Andy and I went out in the woods to gather the six cups of blueberries we needed for pie filling and returned home to throw together a pie: I made the crust, Andy did the filling. (Easy as pie?) There are no pictures of aforementioned pie because it was inhaled (with the help of 10 people) about fifteen minutes after it came out of the oven. Maybe I should have spent my time doing something more lasting . . . .

But then, if there isn’t time for fishing, or wildlife gazing, or ginormous marshmallows or eating warm, fresh blueberry pie, what is there time for? Happiness springs in many things, most of them little and few of them stem solely from the grand culmination of hard work and dreams come true. Hard work buys us contentment and security, which in turn probably makes us more susceptible to happiness, but we have to be on the lookout for happiness all the while we’re heading down the road to “dreams come true.” If we never acknowledge happiness, how will we know it when we see it?

Remember in Wicked when Glinda sings: 'Cause getting your dreams, it's strange, but it seems a little - well – complicated. There's a kind of a sort of : cost. There's a couple of things get: lost. Despite the virtue of being a little worker ant, sometimes we overlook what the grasshopper had to teach us too. The grasshopper might not have been great at keeping food on the table, but he sure knew how to keep his heart full.

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