KidLit Forum

The Seal Who Became Famous
by James Thurber

There once existed a seal that got bored of living on a smooth rock and only swim all day, so he decided to join a circus. After years of practice, he became a great balancer, being able to balance everything. He was very proud and vain about his new position and decided to make a visit to his old home, on the smooth rock. He was dressed with the finest clothes and brought his family a number of nice gifts, form the "city" and started to balance them in order to show off to his family. After he finished his show, he asked them to do one thing that he wasn't able to do, so they all jumped from the rock in the sea. Because he was so "hampered by his smart city clothes" and hadn't been swimming for some years and thought that to swim is something usual for a seal,he actually forgot how to swim and started to drown. It was too late when his family came to rescue him.

In my opinion, this fable tries to teach us the fact that we should all be happy with what we have, with the things God left us with and don't take them for granted because you don't know when you are left even without the things you had. We should all be thankful for what we have, because you weren't given more than we could handle.

Reading this fable reminded me about the novella "Moara cu noroc" and the quote the story starts with : "Omul să fie mulţumit cu sărăcia sa, căci, dacă e vorba, nu bogăţia ci liniştea colibei tale te face fericit", meaning that we should not seek for something we are not able to handle.