Cicadas and ants

Penny’s job

Penny was a cicada and she liked singing. But she knew singing wasn’t the best way to earn a living, especially with so many other cicadas out there. Everyone knew by now that in order to succeed in life you had to follow the way of the ants. Young cicadas learned that through fables in school. Although the fables spoke about a grasshopper, every cicada knew that in reality the fable was about them.

Ants had indeed saved a lot of money during many winters, and now they owned most of the business everywhere. There were many good architects between ants, and Penny envied them. Not because of the money they earned, but because she didn’t feel capable of creating such amazing constructions. She loved visiting interesting buildings and modern apartments. So it was only natural that she applied for a job as an estate agent. And she was happy when she got the job.

Her boss was another cicada. A very noisy one. That’s the problem with cicadas: when they are not singing, they are yelling at you. Her boss seemed to be angry all the time. Penny thought that the boss was just impatient because Penny was new, and as soon as she learned the job, the situation would get better. Besides, she loved visiting apartments with her clients. On occasions, she would describe the properties with a tune, and some customers laughed and clapped. They looked happy, and that made Penny happy.

Penny’s hobby

Years passed and Penny’s job only got worse. Her boss was grumpier and noisier by the day. And her colleague cicadas weren’t exactly in a good mood either. She still enjoyed seeing the apartments created by the ants, but she started regretting not creating something by herself. But the only creative thing she thought she could do was writing songs and singing.

So Penny started writing songs at night. She would go to a karaoke box by herself, where she could sing without disturbing her neighbors, and record herself singing her songs. She started uploading some songs to the Internet and some other cicadas and ants left her positive messages. She started feeling that her life was getting better.

But the next morning she had to go to work, back with the angry cicadas. She started humming some of her songs at the office, and she got reported for distracting others from their tasks. At least she had something to look forward to after work, so she didn’t lose her good mood.

This daily cycle started to affect her health after a couple of months. She would spend more and more hours on her hobby, at the expense of hours of sleep. She lost weight, and she had trouble focusing at work. Her boss would scold her more often, and she had to do more overwork to compensate for the mistakes she made. And because of the overwork, she would go to bed later, because she still wanted to keep writing and singing her songs.

Penny collapsed one day and ended up in a hospital room.

Penny’s vocation

The way of the ants was the most decent way to earn a living. Penny’s parents knew that. But they had also seen with their own eyes what the ant work had done to her daughter. So when Penny told them that she wanted to quit her job and pursue a singing career, they didn’t offer much resistance.

With the peace of mind of being accepted by her parents, Penny left her job and boarded a singing school. The school was full of cicadas younger than her, with amazing voices. They were all very friendly and she soon forgot her time as an estate agent.

The school wasn’t very expensive. It was sponsored by rich ants that enjoyed music. Ants weren’t great singers, but some ants had lots of free time and enjoyed cultural activities. The sponsors would come to the school at times and talk to the young students. They didn’t seem to understand music that much, but they loved it anyway, and they were very friendly.

One would think that everything should be perfect for Penny, but she started feeling unwell again. She trained a lot and she didn’t sleep much. She felt she was too old and that she wouldn’t be able to compete with the younger cicadas. They were all very talented, and there were not enough opportunities for everyone to become professional singers. A few ants would pay for their concerts, but most ants were busy building things. As for cicadas, they wouldn’t pay to listen to other cicadas.

After a couple of years of hard work, Penny did manage to graduate, though. However, she wouldn’t find a job as a singer, as she feared. Her parents were still supportive, but they started suggesting that she should try to go back to her job as an estate agent. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad decision. The job paid well, and she could still sing during her free time, she thought. If she tried hard enough, perhaps some important ant would notice her some day.

Penny’s writings

Penny was not a cicada, nor a grasshopper. She was a woman with too many hobbies. She was probably not good at any of them. But she decided to try to write her own version of one of Aesop’s fables, “The ant and the Grasshopper”. There must be hundreds of them, so hers wouldn’t be much special. But it was a way to distract her mind.

Penny did other things during her free time, like painting and playing instruments. She could focus for hours on one thing, and she’d be more or less happy with the result, but she wouldn’t consider her creations worth anything. There were too many talented people in the world, and she didn’t feel capable of reaching that level.

Penny also had a day job, so she couldn’t dedicate that much time to her hobbies even if she wanted to. During the day, she would be an ant and work with other ants and cicadas in disguise. And she actually enjoyed it. It’s just that she also needed to be a cicada at times. But Penny was not the only one wanting to be a cicada. There were many more like her and they would even give their creations away for free. Even ants were clueless about what was going on in the world of cicadas.

Back at the office, with her ant hat, Penny would think to herself whether she chose the right boat. Life is full of choices, and it’s hard to know which one will help you survive many more winters. The thing she enjoyed most from her time as a cicada was probably not worrying about those things, and simply letting herself go, creating whatever she felt like creating that day. She turned the computer on and she found one of the writings that her inner cicada had started last night. It was a message for her inner ant:

“It’s not your fault”.

…

To all the creative people that feel they don’t have talent.