Photo by Jenny Chambers on Unsplash
One of the evenings, just as I was on my usual evening stroll, I encountered some ants—the tiny ones, along my path.
“I should be very careful so as not to crush them under my feet being unaware of it,” I told myself.
At that moment, a sudden realization struck my mind.
“What might the world look like for this small creature, perhaps the smallest of the creatures visible to the naked eye?” I questioned.
I looked at its world that was visible to me. The street that I was walking on was a part of its world. It stretched for about less than half of a kilometer. It’s not so much of a distance to cover for us, but for this small ant, it could be a lot of distance. And, if this street could be a lot of distance, then the vicinity of my neighborhood could mean the entire world for it.
“Perhaps most of the ants never get to see what lies beyond my neighborhood?” I asked myself. “Perhaps they don’t even notice the streets and the houses. They something else when they look at our homes—some big, scary structures.”
So then, my neighborhood could as well be the entire Universe for these ants that I saw on the street. And there, I found myself asking, “If this is the Universe they can know, then what is the Universe we know? What are the boundaries of our Universe? How far can the wings of our imagination take us?
Perhaps we are not so different than the ant. Perhaps our mind’s Universe is also very small, just like that of the ant’s.
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