'The parable of the baboon.'
Parable of the Baboon
by Alexander Raine on 01/18/11
When I was a boy, one of the few videocassettes my family owned was a little documentary about life in the Kalahari Desert titled "Animals Are Beautiful People." A favorite scene of mine depicted a bushman capturing a baboon in order to find water.
The bushman begins by stuffing a handful of melon seeds into a small hole in the side of a hard mound as the baboon watches. Afterwards, the bushman walks away, knowing the inquisitive baboon will investigate his handiwork. The baboon succumbs to curiosity in no time. He catches the sweet scent of the melon seeds inside. He even finds the hole is just big enough for him to slip his hand inside. The problem comes for poor Mr. Baboon when he closes his fist around the seeds and tries to remove it: The hole was large enough for him to slide his open hand into but is too small for him to remove his fist. The baboon's troubles would cease if he would just let go of the seeds or perhaps find a way to remove them a few at a time. But no. Shouting and kicking and cursing (at least as near as I can translate), the baboon makes war against the mound. But he refuses to unclench his fist.
Meanwhile, the bushman creeps up on the baboon and slips a noose around his neck. And that's when Mr. Baboon's real troubles begin...
As I repeatedly watched this video as a boy, I found myself in awe, every time, at the baboon's stupidity. Why don't you just let go? I often wondered (sometimes aloud). And yet we humans often do this very thing in a figurative sense. Sometimes over and over; sometimes trying to hold on to the same damn fistful of seeds our entire lives... We cuss and scream and kick at the mound as though the mound is the problem we are the source of our troubles--our insistence on grasping at everything, on getting as much as we can by exerting as little effort as possible, on refusing to let go. Some of us even catch the bushman coming up behind us and slipping on the noose. So we blame him for our predicament. But the bushman didn't really trap the baboon--the baboon trapped himself. So, too, is often the case with humans. Indeed, we often criticize family, friends, acquaintances and strangers for having a hand in the mound when we ourselves have one or even both fists stuck in the damn thing. It's the same mound--we're just grasping at different kinds of seeds.
With the start of the New Year, many of us set resolutions; but few of us take a moment to clear out the old and broken things to make way for the new. Those of us who have the insight to make such space often do so by removing things (or perhaps even people), but we seldom examine our thoughts, emotions and behaviors (these three are intertwined) for what we can discard. The power to make real, lasting changes lies in the latter. It's never easy, but a good place to start is looking at what we're fighting so hard to hold on to and whether that thing is trapping or nourishing us. Most of the time, the very things we fight hardest to keep--such as safety, comfort, happiness and control--are the very things we need to risk, surrender or abandon in order to ascend to our next level of development.
Like the baboon that refuses to release the seeds until the bushman comes along and throws the noose around his neck, we wait until catastrophe strikes before we let go. Too late. Catastrophe drags us off thrashing and screaming in our noose, like poor Mr. Baboon.
So the moral of today's journal entry: Don't be a baboon. Let us open our hands. And let go. An open hand is the best way to receive anyway.
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Cool.
S
