Experience with a moral
submitted by: Alva Matheson
Ants 10 August 202
As a young Forward Air Controller In South East Asia I was frequently well above my statutory flying allotment and thus accorded, by law, a mandatory time for Combat Crew Leave. Not inclined to travel out of the country and equally disinterested in local base pastimes, I routinely volunteered to teach school to one of several intermixed schools near Nakorn Ratchaisima, Thailand. Students ranged in ages from 8 years of age to 18 years, with older students mentoring one or more younger students, all wore the uniform of the school and all attended the same classroom. Typical attendance was from 40 to 50 students per class session. The classrooms were typically in an elevated teak wooden barracks-building with solid rain shutters, open bays and solid wood benches behind a shared desk top.
It was not at all uncommon to have what I would call a “following” of students around me, wherever and whenever I moved through the rows of desks. My curious entourage would appear as if by magic around me, drawn from the closest students seated at any given location. Whenever I tried to help one student I could always depend on having another five students from the adjacent desks surrounding me, and their impetuous curiosity was quite literally unbounded.
So it was, on some random day, I was holding forth to address a challenging concept in basic mathematics, and struggling with communicating a new concept to my students in my limited Thai vocabulary. A young man in the back of the classroom raised his hand and ventured to invite me to help him personally at his desk (noting here that there were likely three to four students seated at any one desk in the classroom). When the young man explained his question I realized he was overly concerned about a non-substantive issue. I then explained the solution to him and regarding his concern, I simply voiced the phrase “My Pen Rai” (it is of no consequence). By doing so I was inviting him to look more objectively at what he was doing, and to not allow himself to be misdirected by concerns about some remote element that was of little or no factor in the overall solution of a given problem.
Immediately on making my statement, a darling young student, sprang to her feet beside me and with great elation turned to the whole class… “It is the ants!” Well, I was totally bewildered to say the least. The whole class broke into pandemonium and laughter, mostly at my lack of understanding regarding something that was very simple and common to them. When the class finally quieted down I invited the young lady to stand before the now closed circle of students and teach me about the “ANTS.”
I learned a great lesson from little Nit Noi that day.
THE STORY OF THE ANTS!
“There once was a very unhappy man who lived in the far away mountains as a farmer,. He was growing rice and squash. His farm was not large and it was near a big forest that needed continual burning and clearing and the farm was a lot of work for him, and he was very tired.”
“One night the farmer came home very tired and late, and his wife was very grouchy to him. He had to sleep in the hard floor of the bamboo hut all night. He couldn’t sleep. He was not happy! When the sun came up there was no breakfast waiting for him. He was very tired. He was not happy. His wife would not get up in the morning to fix his food. There was nothing for him to eat. The farmer scowled as he threw the door open and… the door fell off into the mud. The farmer was not happy. As he stumbled down the steps to go to work he didn’t notice a rake lying in his path. He stepped on the rake. It hit him in the head. He was not happy. Without thinking of anything but his ill fortune, he kicked a rock into the ditch and broke his toe. He was not happy. The farmer hobbled on to work in his field. The farmer was very angry and full of self-pity. Without even thinking about it, he abruptly kicked an ant hill out of frustration! Oh, that hurt!”
“With pain in his foot and sadness in his heart the farmer sat down on a log near where he had painfully disturbed the ants. But while rubbing his aching toe he noticed something moving. It was an ant, and it was coming toward him down the log. He watched it some indifference for a little while, but when the ant came close to him he reached for it and with his thumb, and SQUISHED the hapless ant into oblivion! What a feeling of power and satisfaction he felt. He forgot all about his sore toe.
Now, the farmer had something under his control? Here comes another ant down the log, SQUISH, then another SQUISH, and another…! The farmer is so excited he starts stomping on the ant nest. The more he stomps the more ants are stirred up to come forth until he forgets all about his lazy wife, he forgets all about his bruise from the rock, he forgets about the rake, he forgets about being hungry, he forgets about his lack of breakfast, and he even forgets his broken door AND he forgets about his lazy wife?”
“The farmer is now so overjoyed at squishing ants that he fails to hear a very large herd of ELEPHANTS coming down the trail where he is sitting …. !!!!
SQUISH!”
“No more farmer.”
LESSON TO ME: Never let yourself spend so much time on idle issues you fail to deal with the elephants that may be coming down the road! AL Matheson 2022