Helping or Hindering?

A friend recently lamented about a project that was taking forever and had so many challenges and pitfalls, it seemed like it was never going to get done. My usual method of cheerful encouragement and suggestions was met with more descriptions of barriers or detours to accomplishing this task. I felt defeated in my attempt to be helpful and had to say, “Good luck!”, then I backed away.

Later in the day, I joined my husband for a second afternoon of eating watermelon and spitting seeds outside our RV while sitting in the Arizona desert. (Where else can you get ripe watermelon in January?) He remarked that our seeds from the previous day’s session were gone. I wondered if the birds had gotten them.

As we watched, first one, then another black ant headed toward our freshly deposited seeds. We tracked their burrow to a spot about 12 feet away. Now these were tiny ants! One watermelon seed was at least 10 time their weight!

“Can’t be the ants who took all the seeds,” I said.

“Must be,” he said.

As we kept track of their activities, we found individual ants tackling their chosen seed with such complete attention and vigor, I was tired. One ant got its seed stuck between two small rocks that must’ve seemed like boulders. After tugging and pulling and pushing, it stopped to climb to a higher elevation, then investigated the surrounding area in a circular path. Sure enough. In about five minutes, the ant had changed course and freed the seed so it could take off on a different angle toward home.

I saw another one with a similar problem, and I tried to help by removing the stones it was pushing its seed against. I scared the ant away. It must’ve seen my finger as some giant bolt from the sky. A threatening hand, rather than a benevolent one. That seed didn’t get moved again while I was watching. It and the rest of the seeds, however, were gone the next day.

There’s no way to know their feelings about the matter. I hypothesized they might’ve begun groaning by the third day of our eating ritual. I thought they might be saying, “Oh, no! Here come some more of those dratted seeds. Won’t we ever get a break? How can we get anymore down our hole?”

My husband wondered if they might just be grateful instead. We’ll never know, of course, but it did lead me to re-evaluate my conversation with my friend and the project that was taking forever.

My best conclusion came in the form of a better response than offering every helpful Hannah hint I could think of. These suggestions might just have been as overwhelming as the scare my fickle finger of fate gave to the black ant when I removed the tiny stones. So I called my friend back and said, “I know this project seems never-ending, but I believe, if you keep on trying everything you can think of and don’t give up, it will eventually get done. I know you can do it!”