Original URL: http://www.helloworld.edu/folk_story.html (no longer there) The Ant & The Dragonfly -- a story from the Middle East An ant with a settled program in its mind was looking at some nectar when a dragonfly swooped to taste from the flower's cup. It flitted away and came and swooped again. This time the ant said, "You live without labor, and you have no plan. As you have no real nor comparative purpose, what is the dominant feature of your life and where will it end?" The dragonfly replied, "I am happy, and I seek pleasure, this is existence and objective enough. My aim is to have no aim. You may plan as you will, but you cannot convince me that there is anything better. You to your plan, me to mine." The ant thought, "That which is visible to me is invisible to him. He does not know what happens to ants. I know what happens to dragonflies. Him to his plan, I to mine." And the ant went his way, for he had admonished (cautioned) as far as was possible in the circumstances. Sometime later their paths crossed again. The ant had found a butcher's shop, and he was standing under the chopping-block with discretion, awaiting what would come to him. The dragonfly, seeing the red meat from above, came gliding down and settled on it. At that moment the butcher's knife descended and cut the dragonfly in two. One half of the body rolled on to the floor at the feet of the ant. Taking up the corpse and starting to drag it towards his nest, the ant recited to himself: "His plan is finished, and mine continues. 'He to his plan' is ended, 'Me to mine' begins a cycle. Pride seemed important, it was a transitory thing. A life of eating, to end with being eaten by something else. When I suggested this, all he could think was that I might be a killjoy." N This story was related by a Bokharan dervish, about sixty years ago and is from a Sufi notebook kept in the Great Mosque of Jalalabad.