This week, a baby monkey in Japan has quietly travelled the world.
Abandoned by his mother, he was given a large stuffed toy for comfort. In the videos, he clings to it with both arms, small fingers gripping fabric, face pressed into softness. It is difficult to watch without feeling something shift inside you.
Perhaps it resonates because we recognise the gesture. Many of us once held a teddy bear, a blanket, the sleeve of a parent’s coat. We know what it is to reach for something steady when the world feels uncertain.
There is something disarming about seeing that need reflected back at us in another species. It softens the boundaries we like to imagine between us and them. Attachment, loneliness, the slow work of belonging. These are not uniquely human stories.
In these slower weeks at the tail end of winter, it feels oddly comforting to be reminded of something so simple. Comfort does not need to be grand. It does not need to be productive. Sometimes it is just warmth. Texture. Presence.
Maybe that is why so many people paused over this small creature, not out of spectacle, but recognition.
We are not as different as we pretend to be. We all look for something steady when things feel uncertain.
Sometimes, healing begins simply by holding on.
