A monkey with a soda bottle

If you never look around you, thinking about how amazing our environment is, then you’re ignoring the obvious. I tend to do so as well -- because I like to think I’m above just the obvious. But you should be in love with living; otherwise, you’re wasting your time. And if you're wasting your time, you'd better love that too. So zoos are one of those amazing things, for many reasons. They’re also maybe a little cruel, most of the time, as the animals are basically locked in tiny cages. I can’t imagine they enjoy their life being taken from them, but humans are inherently egotistical. We all are. And we, of course, enjoy it. But I bet you’ve never been to a Thai zoo. They are different. Now they still take the animals from their life and put them somewhere else. But they don’t have any cages. All the animals roam around freely, and you walk around, trying to survive. It’s a good time. And people are still people; they want their food, their drinks, sometimes they leave those lying around. This painting is based on a time when one of those people left their soda bottle, and a monkey took it. It must not have been the first time the monkey got their hands on one of those, because he went on an adventure with it, seeming to understand that if he figured out a way to get it open, there was a yummy reward. But he did not know how to make it happen. Which was funny to see, but also made me think of all the times I had been like a monkey with a soda bottle.