The movie ‘The Fox and the Child’ is an amazing unconventionally scenic story on how a young girl encounters a wild fox and became obsessed with befriending her. They go on intriguing journeys together and when the fox became tamed enough, she even brought her to visit her countryside house, bringing her into her room.
At one point, she shuts the door… and to her horror, the fox goes into a panicky frenzy, dashing all over, trying to flee. All the while, the girl was too shocked to react. In a desperate move, the fox leapt through the closed window, and almost died from the fall. In time to come, they managed to make peace, though the fox decided to keep a safe distance. And the girl learnt to respect that.
The final scene shows the girl as a mother, who was narrating her story to her young son. The moral? She says, ‘I had confused possession with love.’ It was a simple yet profound lesson, all the more powerful because of all the ‘magical’ adventures she went through with the fox, which makes the audience entranced by the fox too. The moral applies to both ‘human with human’ relationships and ‘human with animal’ relationships.
Yes, if you love someone, set ’em free. Domestication could be physical imprisonment. Humans sometimes imprison one another emotionally too. If you are someone emotionally blackmailed, and just clingy, remember that you should never let anyone hold the stakes to your happiness, or give them away. Even worse, could you have be ’emotionally domesticated’ already, to the extent that you have forgotten what it means to be free? Take control. Set yourself free!