As you can see, it's a Polish proverb, so I asked a Polish friend what it means, so I got the sense of it right (though, to be honest, it's pretty straightforward). She told me it's basically the same as 'none of my business'; though much more expressive. Which may tell you something about the English character.
Anyway, the phrase kind of stuck in my head and made me think about monkeys. I went to Kenya a couple of years back now, and when we were there, we saw plenty of monkeys. They weren't everywhere, but they were quite common, and there was one feature of monkeys that soon becomes obvious - monkeys do what they want to do. They're pretty much uncontrollable; and completely chaotic. So, what does that say about life? If the 'monkeys' are our circumstances, our feelings, everything that goes to make up our personal situations, does that mean that life is barely controlled chaos?
After all, even though circuses are made up of well rehearsed performances; they're still bright and colourful and explosively eye-catching, with what look like incredibly risky close calls sometimes. Certainly sounds like a much better description of life than business. Relationships should never be treated just as a business transaction. Ever. Relationships mean treating people as people, seeing them as interesting unpredictable individuals who can be worse than you fear and kinder than you dream - which will definitely be chaotic, and probably messy at times. But that's the difference between love and tolerance - which I also wrote about in this other post involving Polish people.
(And apart from the fact that God wants us to love everyone - not just tolerate them - there's always the fact that if you help others deal with their monkeys, they may just help you deal with yours...)
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