The Parable Of The Balloon And The Briefcase

We too often sacrifice joy at the altar of career and frenzied movement.

Photo credit: Filipe Leme | Pexels

Fiction storytelling has the incredible ability to reflect reality back at us in ways real life half-heartedly succeeds at doing. Such is the lesson I learned watching the Disney movie “Christopher Robin” (2018) with my children as we wound down another productive week.

In the film, the namesake Christopher—of Winnie the Pooh fame—grows up, marries the love of his life, leaves the love of his life (spoiler: now pregnant) to fight in World War II, and returns victorious to meet his now-preschool-age daughter for the first time.

Committed to what he believes to be his loyalty to family and country, he climbs the corporate ladder, rung by rung, only to discover that his sleepless nights and blood equity in the company have left him in the unenviable position of deciding whom to fire next.

Unsurprisingly, he is miserable.

Enter the tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff, who slowly peels the scales back from Christopher’s eyes by asking seemingly the inanest questions. One stuck with me.

Here’s the scene: Winnie the Pooh has reentered Christopher’s adult life, and Christopher must take the train to return him from whence he came. Christopher sits in a private car, across the aisle from Pooh, his business briefcase and paperwork strewn before him. Pooh holds a red balloon he requested from a passing vendor in the mad rush to get on with this nonsense and back to Christopher’s day job.

Pooh, observing the hallowedness (and really, dourness) with which Christopher reveres the briefcase, asks: “Is it more important than a balloon?”

Of course it is, Christopher jumps in. Why, this briefcase contains the fates of all our employees and the future of our luggage business. I must make these budget cuts or doom us all. A balloon is just a silly balloon.

The point Pooh drives at is so true, though. Consider what the balloon represents: Fun. Levity. A sense of floating on the air. Carelessness. Laughter. Whimsy. Time spent with a loved one. A permanent yet transient object here today and gone with the prick of a pin. A reminder of the fleeting moments.

The balloon is superior to the briefcase, yet too often, all those of us who are gainfully employed see only the briefcase—and treat everything else as a distraction. Our children. Our families. Our hobbies. Our faith. Our purpose. Our destiny. Our eternal horizon.

How much longer will we go on letting the briefcase call the shots. Gather the papers, stuff them inside the leather binding and find a high shelf on which to hide them away.

At least until Monday.