You can’t work with chimpanzees and not make comparisons to humans. Being around our closest living genetic cousins makes you ponder what we brought to the future with us from our common ancestors and where our species each went boldly, perhaps haphazardly, in different directions. These are questions that academics spend their entire careers attempting to answer, mainly out of the (let’s face it) selfish yet universal desire to understand life’s biggest and most enigmatic questions of “who are we”? and “why are we the way we are?”
I went to a yoga class on Saturday (shout out to Wild Rose Yoga in Cle Elum). The instructor encouraged us to think about the spring equinox and its related elements.
The Earth remains at a jaunty 23.5 (give a degree or two) tilt as she orbits around her life-force of the sun. On the two days of the equinox, one in spring and one in fall, as the Earth is making her annual slow circular stroll, the sun crosses the celestial equator, shining directly overhead at the Earth’s equator and spreading light to both the north and south pole at the same time. Even those of us in upper and lower latitudes experience a 24-hour cycle with equal parts daylight and night. The next day, this alignment changes ever so slightly, lengthening or shortening the day depending on which hemisphere is closest to the sun.
Today while I was cleaning, I was thinking about the equinox, balance, and our modern-day human tendency to strive for an idealized existence that is in perfect equanimity. I don’t think I’ve seen evidence that the chimpanzees strive for the same thing. They fight, they lose a finger, they groom, they sleep, they wake up, they eat, they try to get our attention to play, like Burrito is doing right now.
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insert commercial break here: While I was writing this, I could hear Burrito blowing raspberries in the playroom, so I went to say hello. He immediately engaged me in a game of chase which led to Burrito traveling around his outdoor habitat with me attempting to navigate the mud in my indoor shoes in order to orbit around him as he ran.
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I had physical therapy a few years ago. I took a couple of things away from that experience. Some helpful exercises to do and a new-to-me explanation of proper running technique. The PT shared with me that running (for bipedal humans, anyway), when done in a form that is least harmful to your body, is actually a series of controlled falls. It’s allowing your feet to catch yourself, over and over again, as you fall forward.
Maybe it’s because chimpanzees are not bipedal that they are more in true balance.
Maybe they instinctively know that perpetual balance is not possible, and life would be pretty boring if it was. Or maybe they just exist, one step at a time, whether those steps are steady or not.
Let’s follow in their footsteps and not expect or frustratingly strive to reach a permanent state of balance. We can notice and appreciate those rare moments, like the equinox, when it happens. Then we can let them go and get back to just keeping ourselves and each other from falling, or at least picking each other up when we inevitably do meet the ground in an unplanned and less than gentle way.
