At some point, it dawned on me that my problem wasn't that I didn't understand monads, it's that the idea's so simple I couldn't convince myself I understood it, and that what I actually didn't understand was why anyone gave a shit about them.

Like if a bunch of smart people keep going on and on about something called a "floobiz", and every time they try to explain it to you, it just looks like a fucking cup. The problem isn't that you don't understand what a cup (floobiz) is, it's that you don't get why they keep going on about them like they're something special.