Free For Joshua by Richard Wagamese Page A

always needed to know what the next step was going to be, always had to have an out, a getaway, an alternative to anything difficult, and in that circle on the rock ledge there was no room for planning—only the world I was unused to watching. I wrestled with the desire to daydream, to fantasize as I had always done; keeping my mind within the borders of that circle was one of the hardest struggles I’d ever endured.
    Then the ants came. At first it was only an adventurous one or two crawling over my blanket. They scurried about and then made their way into the grass to disappear. Soon, others came. It wasn’t long before a whole army of large blackants was swarming over my blanket and around me. I wanted to swat at them, drive them away, kill them, but I remembered that I was sitting in a sacred circle and that all life within it was sacred. So I let them be. Then, I wanted to move to another part of the circle, but because it was so small there really wasn’t any place to go. Finally, realizing the futility of things, I just let them have their way and do whatever it is that ants do. After an hour or so they disappeared and I never saw them again.
    I thought about the ants for a long time after that. I thought about how uncomfortable they had made me, how anxious and upset, and how those feelings made me want to strike back, to conquer, to control. I made another tobacco offering. I was thankful because, in their busy scramble around me, the ants were teaching me something very important about life.
    I had always struggled to stay in control, with familiar protective strategies. But the world always marched on, just as those ants had, and there was never really anything I could do about that. I could swat and destroy, or deny and ignore, but nothing would stop the march of the world. My power was small. But the power of life, of Creation, was great. Whenever I wouldn’t accept change and fought against it, I was telling myself that I was bigger than life, bigger thanCreation, and really, at the top end of it, a better decision maker than the Creator himself. It came to me then that if that circle was like the world, then everything in it was equal, worth the same as everything else. The ants had just made me uncomfortable. When I wanted to either kill them or just ignore them and wish they weren’t around, I was telling myself that I was worth more than they were, that my comfort was the most important thing. The ants were showing me that discomfort is a part of the world, too. Part of life. They were showing me that to appreciate being comfortable, cosy, snug, safe, I had to learn to appreciate the opposite. I had to know how it felt to be uncomfortable. Those tiny creatures were telling me that there will always be something that comes along and makes me want to do something to change it so that I can be comfortable again. But if everything is equal and worth the same as everything else, what I need to do is learn to
accept
the discomfort—change—as a part of the world and a part of life. Growing through discomfort and change and being respectful of life, chasing harmony and peace instead of conflict and irritation was, and is, at the heart of the Native way. The ants taught me that. As I sat there and looked back at my life again I realized how addicted I was to fighting change, how unaccepting I had always been of the power of the universe,the Creator’s will. The evidence became clearly visible to me when I looked back at my teenage years.

    When I ran away for the last time, there was only one place to run: the streets. I had a Grade 9 education, no job, no work skills, and no idea of what I was going to do. I just knew that running away from things was easier. And when I got to the street I found two things that I had been looking for all my life.
    The first was acceptance. The people who lived on the street didn’t care where I came from, who I was, how I felt, or what I thought. All that mattered to them