Monkeys are Our Ancestors!

There is a jar full of peanuts. Tied to a tree. It is strategically placed in the jungle so the monkeys can see it.

The poor monkey comes running looking at the peanuts. He puts his hands in the jar thinking it’s a lottery today.

But the next moment, he understands that the peanuts are not coming out of it, as he expected. But by now, he had fallen prey to the tactics.

The shrewd hunter seems approaching. The hunter takes his time and doesn’t rush to catch his hunt.

The monkey sees it and then gets desperate to grab a few peanuts and run. He even tries to take the whole jar with him, but unfortunately, it’s tied to the tree and can’t be moved.

To go free, he has to let that clenched fist go free, let that peanuts go. But the poor soul won’t understand.

The shrewd hunter already has a clear thought-out plan.

Now the monkey is confused. He doesn’t want to get trapped and at the same time, he wants those peanuts as well.

The Hunter doesn’t waste time and that monkey gets trapped for the rest of his life.

Whenever I think of this story, I don’t have the slightest doubt when they say that monkeys are our ancestors.

Like the above story, everyone has his/her hand in an imaginary jar. The peanuts get replaced with many other things which can be different for different people.

It can be anything from ambitions, power, love, lust, money, and relations.

In our life, we go through many such jars of captivity.

We want a good, lavish, satisfied life. We push ourselves to the extreme, putting our hands in that jar which will make us lose our health, family time, missing many occasions, and sacrifice.

Then finally we get everything we want, but then we will feel exactly like that monkey who has lost everything to those material things.

When that Hunter, in the form of Old age, with all the materialistic things, luxuries, and lost time seen approaching us, our situation becomes the same when that monkey sees the peanuts and the Hunter. We get all we wanted but at the cost of these.

Sometimes, we intentionally do it knowing what is laid ahead. But sometimes, the circumstances we face and the life situations we are in make us stick our hands in the jar, and then it becomes even more miserable.

Whenever we look around, we mostly see the second type wherein we knowingly have to get into it.

The monkey, being an animal is incapable of thinking and acting accordingly, but as a man, a more evolved species, can we act in any better way? At least before it gets too late.