"Love doesn’t need you to be extraordinary."
Friendship Found in The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by British illustrator Charlie Mackesy, continues to be a bestseller and even won an Academy Award for best animated short film. This comes as no surprise. It’s a beautiful book with stunning imagery and it captures so much of what it means to be human, of friendship, and the simplicity of kindness.
I love this book. I’ve gifted it multiple times and it's such a comfort read. It reminds us that one of the beautiful things about life is friendship. It shows three important pieces to friendship.
1. We don’t need to find people who are like us in every single way. Sure there will be some connection points, but its the differences that can often make the deepest friendships and are often just what we need.
This is so wonderfully displayed in the book. Who would have chosen to have a young boy, a fox, a mole, and a horse come together? Each is so different. Take the fox, he only speaks three times. Once when he’s caught and two other times. While he doesn’t have much to say like the others, his response in one of the times is telling.
The horse asks what is his reason to keep going, And he responds “You three.”
2. When you have that safe space with friends, you can be your true self. You find that the boy and mole were right when they said:
"Doing nothing with friends is never doing nothing, is it?" asked the boy
"No," said the mole.
I love that it only takes one small spark to start a friendship. It can even be mundane and quite ordinary, but when we find a starting connection with another human, we’re see the gifts of friendship and community. It’s like what C.S. Lewis once wrote:
“Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).
The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."1
Another cnversation I love from the book is:
"Sometimes I worry you'll all realize I'm ordinary." said the boy
"Love doesn’t need you to be extraordinary.” Said the mole.
3. Vulnerability is one of the best parts of friendship.
The longest and deepest friendships in my life (outside of the family I was born into) are easy. We are ourselves completely with no worry that we might scare each other away or that I might be too much. They’ve seen me through so many amazing things and really hard things.
That same kind vulnerability is one of the strongest themes seen throughout this story. As I mentioned, when I’ve sat in the valleys of life, so many of my amazing friends have been there right beside me.
In a later parts of the book, we see this interaction:
"What do we do when our hearts hurt?" asked the boy.
"We wrap them with friendship, share tears and time, till they wake hopeful and happy again."
Making new friends as an adult is hard. I get that, especially having moved to different states twice. But just like vulnerability in pain is necessary for you and for others to have the opportunity to show love, so is vulnerability in the good. Openness to finding ways to meet people and to start connecting. When I first moved to Texas and then Colorado, there were people I met in those first few months and even year that I hung out with for a little while and they ended up not lasting. Nothing bad happened, but looking back I know it was good for that time. But it was also all part of the friend-making process.
In another section of The Four Loves, Lewis shares this brilliant thought:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
I hope you have people in your life you can consider your horse, fox, or mole. And if you’re in a place where you’re looking, don’t give up. Your people are out.
“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NIV)
© 2024 Jamie Lapeyrolerie
Lewis, Clive Staples. The Four Loves. United Kingdom: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991, page 65.