You catch a monkey by cutting a hole in a coconut, putting some raisins inside and tying the coconut to a tree. The monkey reaches inside and grasps the raisins, then is unable to free himself because his fist is bigger than the hole. Unwilling to release the raisins to free his hand, he effectively traps himself. So it is with us, and the promise of potential goodness.

How often have you held onto something longer that you should have? Maybe it was a relationship, or a job, or even an idea. Very often we can find ourselves in the unenviable position of being the unwitting architects of our own misery by virtue of our unwillingness to let go of the potential for goodness that we expect (the raisins), as opposed the reality with which we are confronted (our "stuckness").

There is no great mystery in this, as, no matter how jaded or cynical we may have become during the course of our lives, we have a fundamental tendency to exercise a fair degree of faith in people and a willingness to entertain a certain sense of optimism about the world at large. The disservice that we do ourselves is when we allow the illusion of our own desire to cloud our ability to see what actually lies before us.