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The Monkey and the Shark
Donna Hardy

Monkey lives on a tropical island. Each morning she picks fruit and goes down to the beach to look out over the sea while she eats her breakfast. Each morning a shark, searching for his food among the fruits of the sea, sees Monkey enjoying her breakfast.

"I'm so sick of fish," he says to himself one day. "I will ask Monkey for some fruit." Monkey, glad for the company, shares her fruit with Shark, and from that day on they breakfast together.

One morning Shark asks Monkey if she wants to go for a ride on the ocean. Curious and delighted, she does indeed. She climbs on the shark's back and they go to the deepest part of the ocean-where he turns to his new friend and says, "The king of the ocean lies in the deep here. He is very sick. He needs the heart of a monkey to make him well."

"Oh," says Monkey, "I wish I had known. I left my heart on the island."
Shark turns to rush Monkey back to the island so she can fetch her heart.
Monkey hits the sand running and gets quite far up the beach before she turns to wave goodbye to the shark. When Shark realizes she's not coming back, he swims way.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes told this story a couple of years ago at a San Francisco conference on violence and terrorism. We did not get the 30-page explanation we might have found had it been one the stories in Women Who Run with the Wolves. She left us on our own to go over the story again and again, figuring out what each character and each action might mean in our own lives.

Monkey, for instance: friendly, generous, curious, adventurous, and clever enough to live to tell the story. She's basking on high ground for now, not interested in going to the depths to learn what ails the sick king. Shark can't get her. She is safe. She doesn't worry that in every mythology when the king is sick the whole structure is in trouble, doesn't worry that the sea itself could come after her.

The king needs a monkey heart, surely a healing image, if he is going to live. Monkey is not going to give it to him. Would you? Would you plunge into those depths? Offer your heart? Go to the aid of the sick king? Let's say you do immerse yourself-darn near drown yourself-and then come back like Parsifal, with no idea of where you've been nor a clue to the meaning of the story you tell. If you live to tell a story. Or say you do come back and you do understand. What can you do?

On the day of the Columbine High School massacre, Estes-hearing the news on the radio-walked back roads from her home in Littleton to the school. For the next two years she immersed herself-as psychologist, healer, and community member-in the ocean of that massacre. She had proximity, means, skills, and the courage to do that, to set aside her agenda and offer her heart to help a community through a crisis. From that experience she tells us this: there is healing in the stories of bravery that lie at the heart of every tragedy.
We mend the world soul, Dr. Estes says, by mending ourselves. In case of loss of cabin pressure, secure your own oxygen supply first. It makes for the greatest good for the greatest number if we don't expire while fumbling to help someone else.

In case of bad news overload, put on you own face mask. Turn off all media. Extinguish all flammable voices. Delete all emails that are addressed to more than three people, unless the message is from your writing group. Head for higher ground, away from the sea of awfulness out there.

But, after a week or two of this, think of Monkey sitting on her island, eating alone. Think of the king lying sick at the bottom of the sea. Think Shark. Then speak out. Demand your inalienable rights, or someone else's rights. It's all the same. Speak out for justice, charity, a tolerance of difference, generosity. Say what you think; say it to the right people. Listen. Change your mind. Reach out, share your fruits. Go to your own depths. Go to the polls. Seek a new heart. Stay smart.

by Donna Hardy

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