Monkey World

Very often in life I am disappointed by the way some of my fellow humans behave. People can be very nasty, devious, scheming etc and I always feel like they are letting down the species. However, I am reminded of something comedian Rob Brydon said "Now, with any moral dilemma I always ask myself, 'What would Rod Stewart do?'". Well actually, it's not that similar, but it's a bit similar.. I have started to imagine that the bad behaviour is being done by monkeys - and miraculously it doesn't seem so bad. In fact, for monkeys, it seems like perfectly natural and normal behaviour. You wouldn't get cross at a chimp for having no manners.

Say for example, somebody gets drunk and ruins your evening, you are justifiably annoyed by their bad behaviour. Now imagine the offender is a monkey - suddenly their behaviour seems normal, completely to be expected and even, possibly, charming and slightly cheeky! This works for all kinds of bad behaviour, even genocide. Imagine Hitler was a monkey - there, now he just looks like a monkey doing what monkeys do. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to hear about one troup of monkeys trying to wipe out another troup. And of course we ARE monkeys. Well, OK, apes. There are five species of great ape, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the bonobo, the Orangutan and the human - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape.

Humans can do marvellous things like the Chartres Cathedral, Apollo 11, Beethovens Fifth Symphony, The Eurovision Song Contest... But for the most part, human monkeys are just like all the other monkeys - monkeys. In fact, lately, I've really taken to this, try this when you are out and about - imagine that all the people around you are monkeys. If you're in a meeting imagine all the other people at the meeting are monkeys, if you're on a train imagine the train is full of monkeys and driven by a monkey. All the signals are being controlled by monkeys, the railway cafes are staffed by monkeys selling things that monkeys like to eat and drink. Incidentally, you will nearly always see bananas. We monkeys have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure a worldwide transport system so that bananas are available globally all year round.

Anyway, keep on imagining they are monkeys. It's like your own private, real life version of planet of the apes. The original, not the Tim Burton remake. Now, imagine that you too are a monkey and give yourself a break for all the times you have behaved like one.