We Are the Ants

We’ve been watching Disney movies more often lately. There’s no real plan behind it—we just pick one at random, usually because it feels like a good choice in the moment. My guy hasn’t seen too many of the animated classics, so it’s fun to share them with him.

I’ve always loved Disney—raised kids who love it even more than I do—but what’s surprising is how these random picks have been hitting me lately. Movies I thought I knew by heart suddenly feel different, like they’ve been carrying truths I wasn’t ready to hear until now.

                                                                                                                                                                   

We’ve been watching Disney movies more recently, looking for lighter-hearted feel-good movies. My guy isn’t familiar with too many of the animated classics, so we just pick one at random for our special movie nights. I’ve always been a Disney fan—raised kids who love Disney even more—but this time, I started watching with a different kind of awareness, even if I didn’t realize it at first. Kind of like that moment in Kung Fu Panda when he learns the secret ingredient to their family’s soup.

Recently we chose A Bug’s Life. I’ve seen this movie more times than I can count, but this time it hit me way differently than I ever expected. I understood why it struck me so hard.

Hopper’s words have always stuck out:
“It’s a bug-eat-bug world out there, princess… the ants pick the food, the grasshoppers eat the food. Let this be a lesson to all you ants. Ideas are very dangerous things. You are mindless soil-shoving losers, put on this earth to serve us.”

That’s not just a cartoon—it’s the fucking system. A lie told so often, we forget it can be challenged, or even questioned.

And then Flik’s words:
“Ants are not meant to serve grasshoppers. I’ve seen these ants do great things, and year after year they somehow manage to pick food for themselves and you. So—who is the weaker species? Ants don’t serve grasshoppers! It’s you who need us.”

“Ants don’t serve grasshoppers! It’s you who need us! We’re a lot stronger than you say we are… and you know it, don’t you?”

This is why I relate to Flik so much: I’m the one who dares to say what others are too afraid to say. I’ve known for a long time—if no one speaks up, then no one will know, and nothing will ever change. But speaking up has made me plenty of enemies. I get it. I see through the bullshit, and the more people try to hide something, the more I need to figure out the why’s that don’t click.

I didn’t realize until recently that this is just how I’m wired—to find the problems, so we can find a solution and move forward. And I can be very innovative in my thinking, because I don’t fit neatly into any box.

But that’s the whole game, isn’t it? Control comes from making people too scared to believe in their own ideas, too scared to question anything, too isolated to stand together. One ant standing alone is easy to silence. But when the colony remembers the power they collectively hold? The grasshoppers lose. And they know it.

One of my favorite parts is when Flik is sitting with Dot in the rock scene. He’s trying to get her to use her imagination:
“Seed to tree. You might not feel like you can do much now, but that’s just because you’re not a tree yet. You’re still a seed.”

When I watched this with my kids, I remember loving how it planted that seed for them. What I didn’t know was that it planted deeper in me too. Turns out, I was the seed.

I think people are starting to remember they can question, if something doesn’t seem right. And the harder the grasshoppers push right now, the more obvious it’s becoming—the ants are beginning to see.

We are the ants. And it’s time we remember that.

Funny, the shit that hits me at this point in life. I never thought the morals in A Bug’s Life would feel this real and understood until now.