Gorilla In A Bottle

Each of us is – in the way we approach the world around us – a bit like a 400lb gorilla in a small, glass bottle. First, there’s the paradox of something so large in a container that’s so small, but the gorilla is how we feel to ourselves, not necessarily how the world sees us. Then there’s the way that we wilfully constrain our world – make the bottle small – so that we can make our immediate environment a more manageable [predictable] place. We even cut out lots of things that we know to be true, only because they are inconvenient and uncomfortable for the gorilla.

Why a glass bottle? Because we each look out on the people around us [also gorillas in bottles] and criticise the size and shape of their bottles. We deride the size of gorilla that they think they are, seeing – from our perspective – something more approximating a snail than a gorilla. And all the time, we forget that every complaint and slight that we level at them must – perforce – be something we already recognise in ourselves. If we did not already see it in ourselves, we would have no model from which to attach it to others. You might think, “I do not have to be fat to be able to recognise a fat person,” but you do have to possess a model of ‘fatness’, and be able to place yourself in that model.

Why do we feel like a 400lb gorilla? Is everyone around us also really a 400lb gorilla and it just suits us, somehow, to think of them as smaller? Or is it more likely that we are as ‘small’ as we see others to be, and we wish we were bigger and stronger? If we ever admit that we are just ‘little people’ then how could we stand up to the bullies in the world? Bullies who just won’t accept that they are ‘little people’, too. Bullies who can see that they really are ‘little people’, too, but who want you to treat them like the 400lb gorilla that they wish they were?

Why do we gather round us ‘accoutrements of power’? The Wedding Ring of invincibility – the Shield of a Good Job – the armour of a Respectable Car – the Castle Comfy Lawn? Or maybe the Cloak of Social Invisibility, from within whose folds our Dagger of Mischief can strike unseen? Each of us has got some trusted possessions that help us to feel ‘big’. Even the monk who has given up all worldly things has a bigger and better Hololens of Holiness than anyone else. Or he has until he stops thinking of himself as a gorilla in a bottle.

Well I guess if I have asked such a silly-sounding question then I should try to answer it. But let’s start with some things that it’s not. It’s not actually a fear of bullies: we can see that they are ‘little people’, just like us. They may have some temporary advantage in certain situations, but they, too, have to sit on a toilet with their pants around their ankles, just like the rest of us. Nor is it a fear of being left ‘outside’ any circle of privilege: we can see that whatever station we have is it’s own circle of privilege. Even the dead are resting. It isn’t any kind of fear at all: we just see ourselves as ‘big’ because our mind is normally completely self-centred. It is ‘god’: the centre of the universe – well, our universe at least.

“Oh, come on,” I hear you say, “we’re not gods: we are frail mortals who are bound to obey the physical laws of the universe.” But as the old saying goes, “Even God can’t beat a Royal Flush.” That doesn’t stop us thinking and acting as if we can, perhaps, ‘get lucky’ and beat the odds. Our fears may stop us from trying, but they don’t stop us thinking that it could just be possible.

We feel we are 400lb gorillas because the ‘self’ that’s at the centre of all of our positive emotions looms larger, to our perceptions, than anything else, or anyone else. Objectively, our lives are tiny, and when we stop to think objectively, we’re well aware of that. It’s why we choose such a little bottle. [And even “President of the USA” is a tiny bottle.] But subjectively, we matter. We matter to ourselves, even if we don’t seem to matter to anyone or anything else. And I’m not writing this to tell you that’s wrong. We do matter … And we don’t. But we don’t need to perceive ourselves as a 400lb gorilla – nor to live in a little, glass bottle.

There’s something glorious in the way that Life – all of life – is a massive web of inter-connected existence of countless billions of little things. Even we – by the scale of just this planet – are ‘little things’. And by the scale of the universe as a whole, we are infinitesimally tiny. Nothing – not even intelligent creatures like us – lives at the ‘apex’ of that web, because it has no apex. It is all connected, and it is all one thing: one massive, ever-changing ‘thrust’ of life, that creates within itself the possibility of consciousness. Even consciousness is a web.

When we can see that web – when we can see the wonder of the seething mix of life – we cease to need any kind of bottle. Life is not bottled: the bottle is ‘all in the mind’. And with that glorious perspective on the life of Men – on all life – we also cease to feel like a 400lb gorilla. We may be a tiny speck on a tiny speck, when it comes to the scale of the universe; we’re pretty much that, even on our own planet. But it all matters: not only us but what flows from us, in the great web that stretches across time and space.

And yes, even God can’t beat a Royal Flush, but He’s not just playing one game. he’s playing every game. Or She is, depending on your point of view. And that includes every game where a Royal Flush wins.

Featured image from Shutterstock.