A Life Line

I truly believe we find a message when we need to hear it, I love being creative and I have been meaning to make a Monkey’s Fist knot for a while now. I thought it was an unusual name; it’s given because it does indeed look a little like a fist and it made it easier to throw the ropes between ships, a lifeline if you will.

Now I am great at starting out looking at one thing and progressing on to something else rather randomly. I don’t know how I got onto this but the next thing I was reading about was how to catch a monkey – well you never know!!

The metaphor really struck me so I want to share it with you, I think we are all in need of learning how to catch a monkey.

It’s fair to say it would be a tricky task to catch one of the best natural acrobats on the planet, swinging through the trees without a care in the world. But monkeys can have a greedy stubborn side to them, you know those attributes that aren’t so attractive in person or a monkey come to that.

So if I were to put a pot on the ground with a juicy bit of fruit at the bottom and a hole big enough for a monkey’s hand, that monkey would come down to the pot and grab it’s prize. But the hole is only big enough for the monkey’s hand it can’t get it’s hand and the fruit out. Did I mention they can be stubborn? So instead of thinking ah well I’ll go find some fruit from the tree over there, it stays put holding onto the fruit. The monkey gets caught because it won’t let go of the fruit. It can’t see past that piece of fruit, not looking at the bigger picture of what that piece of fruit means. It’s ultimate capture and loss of freedom.

It got me thinking, what do we hold onto? What do we sacrifice our freedom for? Do we lose sight of the bigger picture because we can only see the thing we hold on so tightly to? It was a blinding contradiction to the lifeline of the monkey fist.

But what is our lifeline? What is it that makes us take our hand out of the pot, to leave the fruit behind? Safe in the knowledge there will be more fruit, probably much better than that one.

For me my inner critic at times has the louder voice, I hold onto these notions that it blatantly makes up on the spot. You know what I mean; we all have that annoying voice that yells. ‘You are just so rubbish.’ ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ ‘Nobody likes you anyway.’ It can leave you reeling; I mean how would you feel if an actual fellow human being said those things out loud to you?

My lifeline? Good friends, my partner, my dog, my family, meditation, gardening, being positive, exercise, breathing, my job, my clients, cake, my colleagues, and more besides. You are my lifelines you are the rope cast from the darkness to say hey it’s ok you know you are doing an amazing job.

And I drop they big rotting piece of fruit and run, jump, whoop, laugh, cry, anything that makes me feel alive.

What ever you are holding onto, it’s your choice to stay there and keep your vice like grip on it. But know this, it will consume you, it will cost you dearly. The moment you let go you will breath that freedom back into your life.

So my lifeline to you is this poem which was a lifeline to me….

Why are you here?

To learn? To grow? To fly?

Or is it a pulsing fear,

That you may never know why?

We look to others,

We think they know.

But it’s always been inside us,

Just waiting to expand and grow.

The edge of the world isn’t that high,

Now is your time.

It’s the universes sign,

Take that leap learn to fly.

Breath, laugh, run, free,

Let in the light from above.

Feel the power that is you entirely,

Share your authentic love.