This year, since 4-5 months ago, my family began to see black ants everywhere in the house, especially in the kitchen and living room. At first, I thought it was due to the unattended food which my mum always left lying around in the house. But there was one very strange thing about the behaviour of these ants – they seemed to love “drinking” the water in our house.
What I mean is that they liked to climb their way into every drinking water jug in our kitchen. There were often times, almost everyday, we would find a swarm of these black ants floating on the surface of water in our jugs. It was such a disgusting sight to me. There were a couple of times when I forgot to check the condition of water before drinking from the jug and ended up tasting the smell of ants in my water. My family seemed indifferent towards this issue; they simply poured the water away to clear the ants before drinking and took no further action to solve this issue. But to me, it was troubling me so much. I mean, why did these ants voluntarily drown themselves in the water and commit suicide? And at the same time, they were also depriving me of my right and freedom to drink clean water at home. So often I was so thirsty but couldn’t drink anything at home because the water in all our jugs was infested with ants. From the spiritual point of view, what did this mean? I know I always like to tell Taenggu everyday to drink more water, and now, even the ants also wanted to “drink” more water too? It was only until a month ago, I took the initiative to buy a fully sealed drinking jug for my whole family that could keep even tiny ants from going inside. Only then was I able to enjoy clean water to drink everyday and the ants problem finally improved after that.
Sometimes I would get one or two ants on my body, laptop, book, table etc too. Whenever I see them, I would simply swipe or blow them away from me. About a month ago, I began to get skin irritations. Whenever I was at home, I would find myself uncontrollably scratching the skin everywhere on my body because it was so itchy. I went to the clinic for this problem too but the doctor couldn’t actually pinpoint the exact cause of my skin irritation. He said it could be due to bed bugs or an allergic reaction to dust in the house. But deep down inside, I suspected it was due to those ants in the house. A few weeks later, though, my skin irritations somehow ceased by itself (even without regular medication) but the appearance of ants never stopped.
Recently, I had the most astonishing discovery that got my heart skipping a beat. One night, I was going to take my schizophrenia pill called Risperidone as usual before I went to bed. I took out the small ziplock plastic bag that contained my pills and to my shock, I found some dead ants stuck at the back of the label sticker.
My first reaction was, how the hell did they actually get in there?! Taking a closer look, there was a small air passageway which the ants might have used to walk through. But still, why did they want to find their way inside and die there?? And none of the other pill bags (medicine for flu and cough) had this problem. The sight sent chills down my spine and got me wondering if someone had casted a magic spell on my medicine. Or in more terrifying terms, was my medicine cursed?
Another odd thing I noticed is my artworks and drawings seem to attract ants too. Nowadays, especially this year onwards, I’ve been doing most of my work on the kitchen table. These ants are not attracted to the food I eat on the table but when I draw or paint, 3-4 of them would come running all over my drawing paper which irritates me very much. Since 2 weeks ago, I decided to take photos when the same situation happened again on my recent drawings to show you what I meant.
See the ants moving in action:
Originally for Seohyun’s drawing (FOR SEOHYUN: SEOHYUN HOPPS), I wanted to use watercolour to paint the whole body of Seohyun Hopps but because I was so affected by those ants, I tried to wipe them away with a tissue paper while holding the paintbrush in my hand and in the process, I accidentally dirtied other parts of the paper. I was so sad thinking that I had destroyed the drawing and I would have to start all over again. Fortunately the next day, a new idea struck in me to use coloured papers cutting to remove and cover the damaged parts so that was how I managed to save this drawing in the end.
A few nights ago, I took some quiet moments to ponder over why the ants “liked” my drawings so much. To me, my first reaction when I saw ants was they were unpleasant and unwelcomed and they were something that needed to be removed. I thought they were just there to distract me from completing my drawing smoothly. Then, I had a switch of thought pattern. What if my drawings attracted ants because they were sweet??? Could it because the art that I made, the thought process, the intentions and motivations behind them were so sweet that they attracted ants??? Suddenly, my whole perspective towards ants changed to a positive one.
Yesterday, as I was thinking about writing this post, I decided to google and find out the spiritual meaning of ants. The following was what a website explained about the spiritual significance of an ant encounter:
“Encountering an ant you should consider that all good things come with time, and effort. Work with diligence, with conviction, and work with others in order to forge your dreams and turn them into reality. Despite their tiny size these little spirits are immensely strong, great strength of will and accomplishment can come even in the smallest of packages.
Alternatively it may be time to consider your own role, concentrate on your specialties and make sure you are making the most of your natural gifts. However, remain aware that nothing can be accomplished without the unity of the whole. Think about how your own contributions in your career, your family, and day to day life fit into the larger picture. No matter how small your task, or your contribution, it is still essential.”
Source: https://www.spirit-animals.com/ant-symbolism-ant-meaning/
After reading this, I realised seeing ants could be a good sign after all! These ants probably appear to tell me to be patient and that good things take time to be realised. I can’t deny that I do have spiritual intentions for all the drawings that I’ve been making this year too. I hope whoever who receives my art or whom I made the drawing for could get good luck and fortune from it too. As for my pills, I still take them too, despite the scary and mysterious dead ants behind the sticker on my medicine bag. Whatever the sign means, I believe as long as I perceive it in a positive light, the outcome would turn out positive for me too. 😊
{ Edited: 3 October 2017 }
Ants found again on my recent drawings.
{ Edited: 16 October 2017 }
An ant found “biting” my Taenggu’s leg? Keke.
Just yesterday, I made myself a mug of hot green tea after having a packet of nasi lemak for lunch. I left it aside on the kitchen table to let it cool while I carried on to do my stuff. About half an hour later, I was about to drink my green tea when I saw this.
I was shocked. Why were the ants also attracted to my green tea when I didn’t even add any sugar inside?? 😱
But the funny thing was, right after I took that photo with my phone, the ants quickly went away.
I was sad that I couldn’t drink my green tea because it was polluted by the ants but I didn’t want to make a new cup, so I just placed it on the other side of the table and drank plain water from my water bottle instead.
About an hour later, I came back to take a look at it. My mug had now attracted even more ants. So I finally decided to pour all my green tea away into the sink along with the ants.
Later that night, I showed my mum this photo.
Me: “Mummy, do ants like to drink green tea too?”
Mummy: “I think the ants in our house are also thirsty.”
Me: “But why even green tea? It’s not even sweet. It’s bitter.”
Mummy: “I think they wanted to detox (remove excess oil) too…”
Me: LOL 😂
{ Edited: 29 November 2017 }
An ant was found again creeping on my WIP Taenggu Rapunzel drawing for our 33rd monthsary last month.
Most recently, while I was preparing for our 34th monthsary drawing this month, I printed a small plaster image on a A-4 sized paper at a printing shop near my office. After that, I folded the paper into a smaller piece and placed it in between the pages of my notebook so that it wouldn’t get crumpled and I then put the notebook into my bag. That night, after I reached home, I took the paper out from my notebook again. As I opened up the folded paper, I was astonished to see 3 dead tiny bugs/insects lying inside. Why and how did they even crawl inside and die there?!
After the green tea incident last time, I had another recent strange encounter with ants too. One morning after I woke up, I went to brush my teeth as a usual routine. When I took my toothpaste and opened its cap, to my shock there were a few ants (like 5 or 6 of them?) crawling around at the opening. I quickly washed them away under the tap before I could go ahead to squeeze some clean toothpaste out on my toothbrush to brush my teeth. This was my first ever experience knowing that ants were actually attracted to my toothpaste too. 😅
{ Edited: 22 March 2018 }
More ants found on my artworks which I had been working on since my last update.
Even though now I have shifted my work from the kitchen table to my new table in our home office, ants never cease to appear on my artworks whenever I am in the process of making them! 😆🐜
{ Edited: 21 November 2018 }
A few more artworks with ants found crawling on them since this April until now!
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