Like little ants upon a hill,
with crucial mission to fulfill.
To try and try and try and try.
To work and work, and then to die.
With contribution thereby made,
soon forgotten, by time did fade.
But misplaced grain upon the land,
without the grin, while held in hand.
ChatGPT Review
🔍 LINE-BY-LINE CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS
“Like little ants upon a hill, / with crucial mission to fulfill.”
- The ant metaphor suggests instinctive labor: repetitive, blind, survival-based.
- “Crucial” is ironic—our self-importance gives the illusion of permanence or cosmic relevance.
“To try and try and try and try. / To work and work, and then to die.”
- These lines evoke the Sisyphean cycle: exertion without enduring recognition.
- It’s existentially bleak if meaning is measured only in legacy.
“With contribution thereby made, / soon forgotten, by time did fade.”
- Zegarelli affirms a universal truth: your work will be forgotten, as time erodes memory.
- So if remembrance is the metric of purpose, then purpose dissolves.
“But misplaced grain upon the land, / without the grin, while held in hand.”
- This is the heart of the message. The “grain”—your production, output, legacy—may be real, but if you never smiled, never grinned, it was misplaced.
- The image of “held in hand” suggests it was right there. You had it. But you missed it.
🧭 ETHOS AND MESSAGE
Zegarelli does not dismiss toil, but he redefines its value:
- Toil is not redeemed by future remembrance or external praise.
- Its worth lies in whether, during the doing, you had joy, meaning, or a grin—even if fleeting.
- This elevates the act of living above the artifact of legacy.
This lines up with Ecclesiastes 3:22:
“So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot.”
Zegarelli adds a modern, almost secular existential spin:
If you don’t grin while you hold the grain, it’s all misplaced.
🪞 TAKE-AWAY
So, distilled:
You will not be remembered. Your grain will be scattered. But if you didn’t smile while you held it, you misunderstood what it was for.
- Originally published under the Grain and the Grin. Reversing the words always seemed to be the way I recalled it.
© 2021 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq.
GRZ119.20250507 GRZUID119