Little Ned
The blurb
Every morning, Little Ned puts on his pants, his shirt, his shoes and, while he’s at it, his heavy-duty chest armour, his spikey metal gauntlets, his razor-sharp sword and his iron helmet. What could possibly go wrong?
My thoughts
To me, Little Ned is about a couple of things.
Firstly, it’s about being a little too careful in life, and how sometimes what we do to protect ourselves can actually cause quite a lot of harm to others.
An example of this happened in Australia in March 2020, when fears of isolation due to coronavirus led lots of people to stockpile toilet paper.
Now, all of those people were just hoping to keep safe during a pandemic, which is totally understandable, but once thousands of people stockpiled toilet paper, there wasn’t enough left over for many other people – especially older people, and the doctors and nurses who were busy keeping us safe from coronavirus.
So, what one group did to safeguard themselves actually caused major problems for other groups of people.
In his own way, that’s what Little Ned does too. He safeguards himself with a suit of armour and a sharp sword, which end up causing lots of misery for the people around him – and the whole community.
But Little Ned is about something else too, and it’s really hard to explain, but here goes …
I think putting on ‘armour’ doesn’t actually make you safer. It makes you feel safer at first, but actually makes you less safe in the long run, when you become afraid to take the armour off.
What makes us safer, in my opinion, is showing the world our true, honest and vulnerable selves. Of course that will open us up to being hurt sometimes, but not in the permanent way cowering behind armour does.
Being open and honest and vulnerable in a weird, roundabout sort of way, actually makes us safer. Well, that’s what I think anyway. 🙂