Thought Picnic: The Awl in the Heart of the Old Owl

The owl as his friends

I love cartoons, something about them excites the imagination, tickles the child in you and offers you a reality you can never think possible and a recovery that is just too incredible within which can be concealed lessons, morals, tenets and interesting ideas about life – but that is the world of cartoons.

This old owl seeing that his days were ending, called his close friends to the clearing to offer some advice. The waited in rapt attention and he spoke with a voice that oscillated between joyful and sorrowful. Joyful that they had come and sorrowful that he might soon leave.

His message was clear without being explicit; the fellowship of the owl can only be maintained if they all worked together. They were all friends of the owl but not everyone knew each other.

His voice

He spoke of a treasure, an ideal and a burden, something to share, something to aspire to and something to bear, they needed to talk together so that what was to share did not go spare, they needed to aspire to did not go haywire and most importantly what if they chose to bear the burden together will not be too dear for all.

But two friends hoping to steal a match on the others jumped for the treasure unsettling the owl that was now under pressure and the owl fell breaking his neck in the fall.

Pushed under the bus

As the soul of the owl wandered off into the bright light, he was saddened and fearful that his wizen old self left in the clearing below will go to vultures because if they had worked together, the burden will be lighter, even if the ideal were yet unreal and the treasure was small.

However, the time had gone for the owl to ascertain the depth of the friendship he thought he had, the great doorway beckoned as what was left behind was there for whatever and whoever to finish that story.

The end.