It's Not My Banana - The Art of Letting Go

Bobbie Baxter, April 2001

Elaborate traps have been devised to capture monkeys in the wild. Often, no matter how imaginative the various devises have been, the crafty little creatures outwit them and escape. It has been said the easiest way to trap one of these cunning creatures is to simply set a banana inside a closed cage with just enough space between the bars to allow the monkey to slip his hand inside and grab the banana. The monkey will walk up to the cage and try to pull the banana through the tiny space. Being a monkey, he will be unwilling to let go of the banana, which allows his captor to simply walk up and snare the little guy. A simple banana has trapped the monkey.

All too often, we humans become trapped by hanging onto our own "bananas" such as problems and stresses in our lives. Look around - do you see any human "monkeys" with their hands through the bars of a preverbal cage with a death grip on a banana? You may even be holding your own banana or two right now.

Bananas may look like other people's problems or stressing over things you don't/can't control; things you can't change; other people's anger or judgments; and myriad other things that upset, anger or frighten you. Just let go of it! Tell yourself, "It's not my banana."

Don't accept ownership of other people's problems. Refuse to become entrapped by your feelings. Let go of the banana and walk away from the trap. The next time someone races by you on the freeway going 20 miles over the limit, instead of becoming angry say to yourself, "It's not my banana." Or when your partner becomes angry by something over which you have no control, instead of stressing, tell yourself, "It's not my banana."

Failure to let go of other people's problems can lead to banana bunching! Pretty soon you may even begin to feel like a banana magnet. Let go of your need to control every situation, person or thing. Let go of your fears. If you can't do anything to fix a situation, or if you have no influence over it, why worry about it? Stop trying to fix other people. They're here to learn their own lessons and to find their own path. Let go of your lack of trust in others, in yourself and in the Universe. Let go of that banana - and keep your hands off other people's bananas!