Five little monkeys jumping on the bed ...

Sara is going to be 3 years old, next month. She loves ... and lives .. every minute!
Playfully! Absorbed and in love!
So we are merrily singing ‘Five little monkeys jumping on the bed’. I am enjoying her expressions. Her light frame enacting jumping monkeys, her eyes and hands giving a stern message from mother ” No more monkeys jumping on the bed”...... and after the 3rd monkey has also fallen from the bed, and we recite what the doctor said, Sara looks at me puzzled and asks -

“But mommy, jumping on bed is fun! Why mama monkey does not want baby monkeys to have fun?”

When Sara speaks , Manpreet thinks and is amazed by her questions!

I thought of how as parents, we restrain, restrict creative outlets, often out of our fears of what all can go wrong and conditioning to social norms.
I thought of the little monkeys jumping in us, all the time too! I marveled how this nursery rhyme portrays the ‘ divided self’ !
The core source of conflict, pain , misery, guilt, rebuke , sense of unwellness, sense of disharmony - the divided self !

Freud called it ‘ Id ( pleasure seeker ),  ego ( rational self ) and superego ( conscience , sometimes too rigid conformity to social norms ).

So as the pleasure seeking, playful, innate ‘being’ in us is living fully in the moment , the ‘Mother’ Ego, checks - Are we safe and sound? If not , what tweaks are needed to maintain safety, certainty, predictability. ‘Doctor’ superego dictates social norms, expectation that is to be followed blindly, with no questions asked.

Life is to be lived, spontaneously, as it is ...not become this difficult task of maintaining harmony, and integrating the divided self, as far as possible.
But when conflict creates distress, psychoanalytically  speaking , goal is to strengthen the ego, so it has greater control over Id, and greater independence from Superego, and maintain equilibrium.

Having said that, there is an existence beyond matter, mind ..... contained in form  but still timeless and eternal .
May the expression of that existence continue this journey , unrestrained, unpulled, truest to its ‘being’ .

So for Sara and people I love , ‘BE’... Explore, Learn, Embrace ,Express,Prepare ...
Jump on bed... if you fell , learn a better, safer trick, but don’t hold back ever ......If you fell, still know I will always love you... I can’t love you any less for your ‘being’!