I know the phrase is “Not my Monkeys, Not my Circus!”
The problem is . . . what if they ARE your monkeys?
What if they make up your circus?
For me, moments are often filled with my monkeys,
Swinging back and forth,
Jumping from rope to rope.
They cackle and call to me, scratch at themselves and at others,
Pick at each other to pull off bugs.
They make faces, and oh! The noise!
The high-pitched calls—
It is all a girl can do to think straight.
These are MY monkeys.
The Buddhists talk about monkey mind.
It “describes a state of restlessness, capriciousness, and lack of control in one's thoughts”
In which the mind jumps from one topic to another,
From one task to the next,
A sense of scattered thinking, a feeling of being unsettled.
For me, my mind jumps from personal tasks to work tasks to interpersonal tasks—
A to-do list that is always running and reordering.
For me, my mind jumps from past to present to future to present to past.
There is an inability when the monkeys call to stay present.
To sit.
To be.
To live in the moment.
Monkey mind gets worse when my anxiety rises.
Just this evening while sitting in my stocktank pool, within a few minutes,
I worried about Millie chasing the bumblebees on my salvia. That led me to worry about vet visits and bills, and how could I go to the vet with school starting this week. Oh, and that reminded me that I still hadn't done the rewrite of my quiz in my freshman composition class. In the meantime, the crape myrtle looked a bit odd, and I wondered if it needed water or fungicide. Then, I thought about the water bill, and wondered if the dogs needed water in their dog dish, which then made me think about the heartworm medicine—and the air filter I needed to change because I do the air filter when I do the heartworm medicine. Mixed in with all of this was a sense of being overwhelmed—and a feeling that I was failing at it all.
The noise!
The monkeys distract with their swinging and calling.
When I feel the sway of the ropes as they begin their play,
When I feel the uptick of my heartbeat and blood pressure,
When their vocal decibels rise,
I have learned a trick.
I stop and talk to myself, “It’s okay, baby girl.”
I know I am not a baby.
However, there is very little that calms the monkeys as much as this simple phrase
Said in loving kindness by grown-up Kim to the little Kim who still lives within.
Regardless of how big we get, how large our shoes are, how many wrinkles we wear like corduroy ridges on our faces, and how gray (or absent) the hairs become,
We are still basically little kids within, little kids who want to be seen and loved and cared for.
I started the “baby girl” phrase with my female dogs.
When Millie got scared when the thunder rumbled, I sat beside her and told her the same thing I now tell myself when the monkeys cackle: “It’s okay, baby girl.”
I patted her and rubbed behind her ears.
Much the same way, I used to hold my sons close when the noise of the world became too much for them.
I used to rock them and sing to them, reminding them, “It’s okay, baby boy.”
I am much too big to rock and sing to.
I am much too old.
However, even the simple acknowledgement of the fact that life can sometimes be too much,
Too loud,
Too scary,
Too unsure—-this simple acknowledgement silences the monkeys.
When I rocked my boys and told them it was okay, I honesty wasn’t sure it was.
I couldn’t fix Jonathan’s colic or the ear infections.
I couldn’t make the pain go away or make the bad dream disappear.
All I could do was acknowledge my presence and unwillingness to let them down.
“It’s okay, baby girl” is perhaps my new way
To take a deep breath
To figuratively acknowledge that life has become too much,
To figuratively acknowledge that it is okay for me to stop—-
To sit.
To cry if I need to.
Or just to listen to myself.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Stilling the monkeys is a new goal for me.
Learning how to be—and do nothing--is a new reality.
However, this evening, while the monkeys swung on their ropes as I worried about heartworm medicine and crape myrtles,
I was able to calm the monkeys enough to realize that their noise had almost made me miss:
The green hummingbird dipping its beak into the salvia blossom,
The hum of the bumblebees on my vitex tree,
The joy of Millie as she hunted for life along the fence line, hoping for that random squirrel to cross her path,
The warmth of the sun on my face,
The stillness and quiet that comes as a joy after a long, busy day filled with schedule making and hiring.
The feeling of my leg and foot gliding through the water,
The Summer Chill mix list on my Spotify playlist beating through the air, making my heart thump in rhythm,
The female cardinal swooping down over my head, bringing me to say, "You go, girl!"
The little lizard gliding along in the shade beside the house,
And the joy of the moment—--that single moment.
When the monkeys calm down,
I can finally take a deep breath and sigh in relief and just
Sit.
Be.
Live.
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