Lessons from Ants

In 1959, the French zoologist Pierre Paul Grassé faced a mystery that had troubled science for generations. How do termites and ants build huge, complex structures mounds several meters high [music] with ventilation systems and tunnels without an architect, without a blueprint, without a manager who sees the big picture? [music] Grassé looked closely and discovered something amazing. No ant knows what it is building. It has no idea about the final structure. All it does is respond to the chemical trace left by the ant before it. [music] It places a single grain in place and leaves a mark. The next ant smells it, adds its own grain, and leaves a new mark. Grassé called this stigmergy, coordination through traces. He proved that the perfect structure does not exist in the mind of any single ant. It is created from thousands of small actions, each only responding to the one before it. No ant sees the plan, but together they all build a cathedral. Listen to Homa. No ant needs to know the plan in order to contribute to it perfectly. It is enough that each one [music] does its small part faithfully and leaves a good trace for the next, and something much greater than any one of them arises. Friends, this law is the story of our lives. We are paralyzed because we do not see the big picture. We feel that if we don't understand where everything is going, our small action has no value. You say, "What does it matter if I do this small mitzvah? What does it matter if I educate just one child? If I help just one person? If I leave behind something small? After all, I don't see the end." Thousands of years before Grassé, our sages formulated the law [music] of stigmergy of the soul. In Pirkei Avot, it is written, "Rabbi Tarfon said, 'It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.'" Listen to the perfect precision. You don't have to finish the structure. You don't even have to see it. You are not the ant that finishes the cathedral, but you are not allowed to be idle because your grain, the trace you leave behind, is what guides [music] the next generation. Part of a plan that is thousands of times greater than you. Every mitzvah we do, every value we pass on, every kind word that remains after us is a trace. We do not see the cathedral of the generations, but we are building it. Every Jew for thousands of years placed a single grain, left a single trace, and together the center was built. So, the next time we wonder what the point is of our small action, let's pause and remember the ants. Let's remember that none of them saw the plan. We don't need to see the entire structure. We only need to faithfully place our own grain.