My Inspiration
When I was a little boy, there were two stories I loved being read to me every night. The Little Red Hen and Leo the Lop. These stories had strong messages and messages that were relayed through animals.
The story books The Little Red Hen and Leo the Lop shaped my life and made me who I am today.
The Little Red Hen is about a Chicken and three farmyard animals. The Chicken finds some grains of wheat and plants them. She goes through the 4 stages of growing the wheat, harvesting the wheat, milling the wheat, and lastly baking with it. All through these four stages, she asked the three farmyard animals for help, but for various reasons the animals had excuses.
After the Little Red Hen had baked the bread, all the farmyard animals came running and were all eager to help eat the bread. She replied where were you when I planted the wheat? where were you when I grew the wheat? where were you when I milled the wheat?
You were nowhere to be seen. Now that the bread is done, I am going to eat the bread myself.
Leo the Lop is a story about a rabbit who had long floppy ears. All he wanted to be is normal looking like all the other rabbits who had short pointy ears that stuck straight up. He tried to be normal like all the other rabbits. First, he tried exercise, but all this did was his ears to stick straight out. Then he tried hanging upside down. When a possum asked Leo why he was hanging upside down, Leo replied that he wanted to be normal. But what is normal the possum asked?
After some long thoughts, Leo realised that he was unique and hopped back to the other rabbits. “I am normal” he yelled. The other rabbits became confused, and tried to imitate Leo, but regardless of how hard they tried, their ears kept pointing straight up.
The question is: who decides what is normal?
Later in life I realized the true meaning and the messages cleverly woven into these stories, and these stories is what made me who I am today.