Always a monkey on your back

I don't care who you are

What you do

How you do it

Everyone has a monkey on their back

And most unfortunate

It is

That as soon as you get rid of one

Another one just comes rearing up

Like Medusas snake hair

Never to be tamed

Never to be left at peace

Yes

We all walk around

With a monkey on our backs

Like it or not

It's the fate of humanity

And I don't mean that we all have drug addictions

No!

Simply that

as much as we all have an Achilles Heel

A sensitivity. A fatal flaw

In that same sense we all have some burden we carry

Some torment that is bound to us

Making our lives more difficult than need be

This we sometimes carry quite ceremoniously

Sometimes quite austerely

At times with deep reverence

And others with martyrdom

Yet mostly quite obliviously

Making the rounds

Making the rounds

All with full fledged monkeys on our backs

I learned

in order to handle the upheavals of life

I learned patience

In order the deal with the vasisitudes of people

I learned compassion

To better cope with the good and bad that naturally accompany living

I learned gratitude

In order to not let myself be engulfed by accolades or dissatisfaction

I learned humility

The thing is that

These lessons are always ongoing

Always reoccurring

In never ending variations

And so I must learn and then re-learn them anew each day

And so it goes

meanwhile

Trying not to question the journey

Or even the destination

But rather looking only at my small part

in all this

the only thing that I can truly control

My reaction