Do you know Barbapapa? It’s a French children’s picture book from the 70′s. What’s characteristic of Barbapapa, apart from being a pink amoeba-shaped figure, is that he can change his shape. When he is born/hatched out of an egg into the earth, he does not know this though. He arrives to a world where he does not fit it. The family who owns the garden where he appears, sends him to the zoo! There he discovers he can change his shape and sneak out of his cage. He tries to become friends with the other animals by taking on their shapes, but they don’t seem to relate to him. In the end he must leave the zoo (they cannot have animals who leave their cages) and it’s not until he dedicates himself to helping people in need, that he is welcomed back into society and to the family whose garden in which he was born.
How many feel as if they don’t fit in? How many try their best to change shape to be alike others and to make friends? I think many people find that that kind of recognition is reason enough to stay that way, keeping a shape that was not the one they were born with. When we finally come out of the cage, looking for our very own shape and eventually finding it, we are not always welcome among our society, family or friends. Suddenly they don’t know us any longer. It also takes courage, because if we do decide to leave the safe cage, it might not be there if we want to return to it.
Barbapapa has a big heart, no one had bothered to get to know him well enough to learn about it, but when people were in danger, it shone through and he saved them. His salvation back into society was heroism, or maybe more correctly, to act his nature in all situations. That we can all do!
In the end, I believe, people in every society will see they can always benefit from having warm-hearted friends, even if they are weird-looking and changing shapes every so often! As with Barbapapa’s 7 children, it’s not predefined what we are going to look like. We not only change shapes, but we come in different colors and one of us might even be hairy, but we work wonders together!
It does not end there either. Barbapapa later on becomes very sad and when the family, where he lives, takes him to the doctor they are informed he is longing for a Barbamama. The journey begins! Off they go, all over the world, looking for a Barbamama and everywhere they go they are suggested to go elsewhere. She is not in London among the hippies, she is not in India with the Yogi, she is not in New York with the rich man, she is not in the countryside with the farmers and she is not in outer space with the aliens. In the end they have to go back home, without her. Then one day, the ground cracks open and a full grown Barbamama appears – in the same garden as where Barbapapa once was born!
My conclusion:
Don’t go looking all over the world for a treasure you will only find in your own garden! Don’t go looking all over the world for the the missing pieces of yourself when they can only be found at home within you!
Copyright © 2010 Yvonne. All Rights Reserved.
