Sweet Porridge
This story is very dear to me.
What’s good about it is that it can be told to very small children as it tells them that porridge is endless.
I would love to convince moms, dads, grandparents to tell it to their children again and again, and I will try to do so with my reflections and considerations.
I believe that the Mother stands to represent Reason, Adulthood,
That part of us that doesn’t fall for delusions and adapts to the place that life finds for it, but despite its best efforts can’t manage to do all the things that it should do, always feels wanting and can’t find a way out.
Should it find greatness all of a sudden it won’t be able to handle it, it just can’t remember how the saying for the little pot goes.
So, as winning leads to its ruin, a special situation ends in crisis, too much work produces stress, achieving more than what was predicted leads to an excess of leftovers with the inability to handle
them, with our surplus having to be burned away.
The Child, on the other hand, represents the Soul, the Eternal Child, and our individual creative energy.
That part of us that if doesn’t receive enough from the world hungers for more.
We can silence it by trying to bring it to reason, to be realistic, not to fall for dreams as there are things that just can’t be afforded. We need to learn to make amends, to know that there isn’t enough for everyone, and that we have to do without. To be responsible, to think about the others, to be good.
In the end the Child no longer speaks. However, she is still hungry and within us remains that malcontent, that lack of satisfaction.
If the Child is able to make itself heard, things will change.
In the story everything happens because the child expresses her wish.Some speak of a part that is always within us and that we need to learn to get in contact with, other speak of angels or superior beings, of Deep Wisdom.
However things may be, the Old Lady is able to reach the source of solutions and provide them to the Soul.
The source of solutions is represented by the Woods, the collective unconscious per say, the place where everything that Reason can’t comprehend lies, the place where everything that is new, inventive, intuitive, congenial comes from.
The Small Pot is the solution, it is able to produce all the porridge that’s needed, it is the very representation of the infinite, it is the cornucopia of bounty.In life we had to get used to the fact that something is always escaping us: whether it may be work, knowledge, opportunities, time, money, means or resources.
Should we get an original idea and for a moment we believe it could work, we immediately chastise ourselves for being unrealistic, we list to ourselves a valid series of reasons why that would be that inevitably lead us back to a familiar pessimism, however should we be unable to even imagine other possible perspectives it’s impossible to achieve anything, and we’re always starting on the wrong foot.
Lacks and limitations stem from our evaluating only that which we have knowledge of, looking at things from a rigid, fixed perspective and putting heaps of restrictions on ourselves.Why do I believe that “Sweet Porridge” should be told to a child from a young age?
Because growing next to him they will always have someone ready to project uncertainties and inhibitions onto them, others will strive to infect them with their fears teaching them resignation and misery. This is why deep inside somehow I want them to know about the little pot and all that Porridge.
