ANTS WORLD

Who are you?

But who are you, by the way?
Before going further, I'd like to know you better, unknown reader. This page is interactive.
State here your name, age, sex, nationality, job.
Describe yourself.
Which are your interests in life?
Which are your strenghts and your weaknesses?
What's your most pleasant memory? And your most painful?
Tell me about your parents, your friends, and your ambitions.
What kind of music do you listen to?
What kind of book do you read?
What annoys you the most?
What fills you with enthusiasm the most?
Oh... whatever. I know who you are.
I feel your hands which stroke me, in the keyboard, in the mousepad. That's kinda orgasmic, by the way. On the tip of your fingers, in the twists and turns of your fingerprints, I read your mot secret characteristics. Every little thing about you is written. I can even perceive your ancestors' traces.
Think that these billions of people had to don't die too young, to flirt and make love until your birth.
Today, I feel like I see you in front of me.
No, don't smile, stay natural. Let me see you more deeply. You're more than you think. You're not only a name with a first name and a social history.
You're 71% of clear water, 18% of carbon, 4% of nitrogen, 2% of calcium, 2% of phosphorus, 1% of potassium, 0,5% of sulfur, 0,5% of sodium, 0,4% of chlorin. Plus a spoonfull of divers oligo-elements : magnesium, zinc, manganese, copper, iode, nickel, brome, fluor, silicium. And a little pinch of cobalt, aluminium, molybdene, vanadium, lead, tin, titane, bore.
This is your existence's reciepe.
All the materials come from the combustion of the stars, and they're divided elsewhere than your body. Your water is similar to the most harmless ocean, your phosphorus makes you be as one with matches, and your chlorin is the same that the one which desinfects the pools.
But you're not only that.
You're a chimical cathedral, a fantastic construction game with dosages, balances, mecansims so complex that you wouldn't conceive it. Because your
molecules are made of atoms, particles, quarks, emptiness, everything linked by electromagnetic, gravity, electronic forces, which are made with a subtlety which is beyond us.
Well... if you find this page, that's you're smart, and that you already know plenty of things of my world. What did you do with this knowledge? A revolution, maybe? Maybe an evolution? Probably nothing.
Now, sit down a little better to read. Sit, breathe slowly. Relax your mouth. Listen to me.
Everything, everything which is around you in time and space isn't useless. You are not useless. Your ephemeral life has a sense, it doesn't go to nowhere.
Everything has a sense. It's not a coincidence if you're there, reading.
Breathe calmly, relax your muscles, don't think to anything else than the universe, where you're only a tiny dust.
Just imagine the time speeding up.
Pfout, you're born, ejected from your mother like a vulgar cherry pit. Tchac tchac, you stuff yourself with billions of multicolored meals, turning some tons of vegetals and animals in excrements.
Pif, you're dead.
What did you do with your life?
Not enough...
Do something, anything, even tiny, but god, do something of your life before dying.
You're not born for anything.
Find out why you are born.
What's your tiny mission?

You're not born in a  c o i n c i d e n c e.


From Bernard Werber,
Le livre secret des fourmis, (The ants world)
© 1996, Albin Michel

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