Fire ants are no joke.

Though tiny, their bites are incredibly painful.

Since they live in large colonies, with as many as 500,000 ants in a single mound, if one attacks, most likely many will. And the wrong insecticide can cause the colony to split. Now you have two mounds.

When they swarm, they sting repeatedly. And their stings inject burning venom.

If you are allergic, these stings can be deadly.

Fire ants, again, are no joke.

So the story of the fire ant changes drastically depending on who is telling it.

1. It can be the story of big things coming in small packages
2. It can be the story of strength in numbers.
3. It can be the story of toxic behavior in groups.
4. It can be the story of the sensitivities that make behavior hurtful to one person and deadly to the next.

And in the contrast, we can see something about our own broken personal and political relationships.

If I see myself as the underdog, I can inflict tremendous damage and consider it a triumph of the little guy.

If I come from an alienated mindset, I can miss the constructive power I can exercise by joining with others and consider myself resigned to destruction.

If I see my people’s cause as just, I can excuse toxic behavior from my friends I would never accept if it was pointed at me.

If I don’t know my own strength, or don’t consider my neighbor’s weakness, I can snap on the wrong person, and do tremendous, irreparable harm.

Conversely, if I have no empathy for someone else’s struggles, I can drop the weight of an entire oppressive system on them because they dared to nip at my heels. I can conflate a sting with a stabbing because I’m not accustomed to being stung ever.

If I brand someone the villain, I probably won’t see the causes that drive them. I won’t have any hope of stopping the problem at the root. I can’t think outside the box if I’m busy stomping on the box.

If I don’t see the need that the gang meets, I won’t have a prayer in transforming the culture that drives it, because to me it just needs to be squashed by a bigger gang.

But the wrong weapon will only multiply the problem. I will raise up more people bitter, alienated, and committed to causing mayhem.

Squishing ants won’t help. I need to transform fire ant culture.

This is true in relationships.

It’s true in nations.

It’s true in family systems.

It’s true in social systems.

If I don’t do the work I need to do to take care of my own wounds, I can easily just bleed on everyone else. I can make my addiction everyone’s problem. I can make my trauma everyone else’s trial.

Trauma is real. It must be honored.

I have a right to address it.

I don’t have a right to pass it on.

The greater challenge and opportunity is not just that we live among fire ants or even are fire ants. It’s that generations of fire ants have shaped us. They’ve built our institutions. They have forged our culture. They’ve made our movies and written our songs. Fire ant life is what we know.

And fire ant life is no joke.

So today, may we keep the best of our fire and shed the worst.

May healthy fire fuel our relationships, and harmful fire not consume them.

May distorted self-image and past trauma not cause us to sting and burn people we have the opportunity to love.

May my strengths not make me oblivious to your weaknesses. May my weaknesses not cause me to despise your strengths.

And may we keep our stingers to ourselves.

(Photo Credit: Egor Kamalev)