One day a young boy and his father were sitting in their pasture watching the early spring grow as dusk approached. They both took off their shoes to enjoy the wild grass between their toes, it had been a long day working away, they were gardeners and had spent most of the day sowing seeds for the bountiful harvest they both hoped would come.
The young child felt some ants crawling upon his leg and began to squish them as they did what ants do: crawled around unceasingly looking looking looking.
Father watched for a little while and then asked his son why he was doing it. “Well Father, I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess I thought it wasn’t right that they crawled about my skin so I rid myself of them.”
Father, thinking this was a mean thing knew that this attitude towards other things of this earth should be stopped as soon as possible, and asked: “Well, what about your mother and I, when we hug you when you return from a friend’s, do you feel like squishing us?”
The young boy thought a while, smiled, and said smartly: “It is not I who squishes you, father, you and your bear hugs squish me!”
They both laughed at this and then went silent for a while, watching the sky turn it’s beautiful colours.
“How come there are ants in this world, father? They don’t rake the lawn or sow the seeds, they don’t make breakfast or wash the sheets, what good do they have?”
Father thought a while, wondering himself about a world without ants.
“Do you see how that apple tree blossoming so pink into the sky and reached with all its might up towards the clouds?” “Yes, I do, it is clearly in front of us.” “Do you see how the clouds it reaches towards have inside of them the beautiful light pink of the blossoms?” “Yes, I was just noticing that as we sat here with our toes in the grass.”
“Do you think that the clouds get mad at the tree for being so pink, reaching up so high as it does?”