Sorry, I thought when you said missing piece in your previous message, that you meant the missing piece of what makes monads unique (arguing from a place of knowledge about “no THIS is what makes monads important”), rather than the missing piece of the explanation. Either way, hopefully the posts I wrote and linked are written assuming nothing more than the basic Haskell syntax, so if you’re curious about the rest of the explanation, hopefully it’s clearer there. If it’s not clear there, I’d appreciate any feedback.