How to Lighten the Mood
Bonus: A little monkeying around can strengthen your primate community.
Hi, friends.
Right away I need to make a confession.
Do you see that pun in the subhed up there? Monkeying around? I don’t feel good about it. Because this post is going to be about apes, NOT monkeys. Normally I try to avoid adding to people’s confusion about which primates are which. (I just did an image search for chimps and got everything from gorillas to orangutans to macaques. And, mystifyingly, one elephant.)
But today I’m trying to, you know…lighten up.
Anyway! How are we doing in this liminal end-of-year time? The weeks when family responsibilities and to-do lists turn into tidal waves, professional tasks start getting pushed off until next year, and the drugstore is blasting Mariah Carey’s Christmas album while you’re trying to buy more children’s Tylenol? Not to mention, you know, maybe you have some general dread about the state of the world.
We should all have a hot cocoa or light a nice candle. Or do something…fun?? More on that below.
What I’ve Been Working On
I got notes back from my editor on my book draft! The notes were shockingly positive! So now I’m diving into light revisions, along with fact-checking and other elements that all have to happen at the same time. I printed out the whole manuscript and showed it to my older daughter, who said, “Are you going to put, like, a…hard cover on it?” Good suggestion!
(And no, I’m not using five colors of highlighter to mark up the pages; that would be ridiculous. I’m using four.)
I also wrote a piece for the Boston Globe called “What are fathers for?” which has some overlap with my book, and got fewer nasty comments than I was expecting!
Dear Inkfish
I’m feeling so isolated, and I’m afraid it will only get worse now that we’re heading into the cold, dark, sunset-at-4:00 time of year. Supposedly I have a community out there; how can I strengthen my connections?
—A Lonely Ape
Dear Lonely,
I know how you feel. Heck, most primates probably know how you feel. We’re social animals and we like to be together. There’s a reason the game is called Barrel of Monkeys.
Speaking of games, you might take a tip for your current predicament from the chimpanzees.
Recently, scientists observing wild chimpanzees in a national park in Côte d’Ivoire saw that the animals spent a surprising amount of time playing. Not just the kids—adult chimps played with each other too.
What does play look like for a grownup chimpanzee? Examples included “wrestling, tickling, chasing, swinging, pulling, and mock biting,” the researchers write. Sometimes multiple adults played together, or mixed groups of adults and kids. The apes occasionally brought other materials into their play, including water, sand, fruits, logs, and even snail shells.
Sounds rowdy! But it wasn’t random.
Adults played more with other chimps whom they’d recently fought with. They also played more during periods where males were competing for mates. It seemed that play was a way to defuse social tension.
The scientists also saw that chimps were much more likely to play on days where they later worked together to defend their territory, or went out hunting. Adults who had played together were more likely to collaborate during these activities.
In other words, for the chimpanzees—some of our closest animal relatives—having a little fun might be an important way not just to relax, but to strengthen bonds and prepare for challenges.
Maybe a takeaway for us humans is to treat a time that feels serious and lonely with a little lightness. Could you find a fellow ape to do something fun with? Play a game, laugh at a show together, do some mock biting? I’ll leave it up to you to decide about the snail shells.