…and other thoughts on changing your perspective.
Who, on average, eats more bananas – human beings or monkeys? If cartoons have taught me anything, it’s that monkeys are way more in love with bananas. Sure, we humans eat them for potassium and because they’re a cheap, readily available snack when you’re in a hurry. But monkeys eat a lot of bananas. And they do so more regularly than we do.
So since they’re much more the connoisseur of the c-shaped fruit – more so even than the Chiquita banana lady herself – it’s fair to say we might be able to learn a thing or two from them.
Most humans growing up in western society have learned to eat bananas by pulling down from their longer stem. Even if you end up mushing part of the banana because the stem is stubborn and won’t pull down correctly, it doesn’t matter because that’s the way you open a banana.
And yet, monkeys do it differently. They gently pinch the black end of the banana open, which allows you to peel it clean and easy.
Every morning, I have a banana in my morning shake. I usually do the “normal” pull away. Even knowing the monkey way is so much easier and often more effective. But while I was confronting a particularly stubborn banana, it occurred to me that if I just tried the monkey way, I could open this fruit the way it wanted to be opened. I could stop trying to force it my way just because that’s what I expected and was used to doing.
That’s when the lightbulb went off.
How often do we go through the motions just because it’s the thing we’ve always done? Even more so, how choose to do something – even if we know there’s a better way – simply because it’s what we’re used to doing? How much of the time are we on autopilot even if we know and see that there are ways to be more in control?
How many things in our life do we do that we could improve with small tweaks? How many “life hacks” exist that we could implement that would genuinely improve our life? Or even just help us to feel the easy of going with the flow rather than fighting the current? If the way we’ve been taught to open bananas isn’t the easiest way to do it, yet we still teach others that’s the way to do it, what other basic foundations of our life are we taught are normal that may make our world slightly more difficult than necessary?
We understand reality only through the very small sliver with which we see it. That sliver is based slightly on our own impressions and largely on the impressions of the world others have had that have been passed down directly to us. Sometimes we think that’s the way it is simply because that’s what someone said it was. If we just open our eyes and learn from the world around us based on our own experience (combined with the intuitive knowledge many of our animal friends instinctively have), maybe there’s so much more we can learn about the true nature of reality.
Whether or not you agree, I at least hope you found most of this banana revelation a-PEEL-ling.
I’m sorry and you’re welcome.
But lately, I’ve been in a bit of stimulation over-drive. For good reasons. So I’ve had to shift my focus. Now, when I’m running or lifting or yoga or whatever-ing, I leave the music at home. I don’t even bring my phone with me. I don’t want the distraction. I want to just enjoy the sights and sounds for a short period of time and let my own thoughts take over. Those thoughts, as I know from my (unfortunately sporadic) meditation, like to run wild. But as long as I breathe and keep a mantra, whether it be “just to that car” or “I feel good” or “I trust myself” or “don’t look weak to the passersby,” I can get through it. And when I get back to my apartment and I finally start letting the world back into my headspace, I find I’m much calmer and more in tune and in touch with what’s going on around me.
Incredible news, everyone.
Briana Hansen 