Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/r8lxtWu6aEg

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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FLYING MONKEYS R US

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Ages and ages ago, legacy author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote these words:

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“All speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.”

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What in the world did RLS mean?

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As a child back in days of yore, I understand this utterance in my own imaginative way.

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Running through unmown grass in humid summertime fields, I yell, “Watch out for flying monkeys!” causing my playmates to duck to the ground half-terrified and half-laughing. The idea of flying monkeys comes to life for a split second. Of course there are no flying monkeys but our designated leader makes us doubt this fact. Luckily, a kind of reality-based common sense prevails and we realize that flying monkeys are not going to happen. For now.

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So RLS knew we kids of earth live in two worlds simultaneously, a world where we can believe the unbelievable just for fun. And later, as adults, this honed skill means we can believe the unbelievable at our convenience.

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But somewhere in the caverns of our minds most of us do not lose sight of the fact that the idea of flying monkeys is merely a useful tool, employed to distract ourselves from realities we either don’t understand or don’t want to face.

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We humans are a playful species, alternating our time between things we wish were true but aren’t,  and things we know all too well to be truths that stolidly won’t go away.

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If I can’t deal with the idea of some awful truth I race to find the flying monkeys.

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Flying monkeys I can deal with

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed