ONE particular scene in the movie caught my curiosity, above all, perhaps more than any other.
After some period of time drifting and roaming around the globe, three movies to be exact, the group finally have their dream come true: get back to Central Park Zoo. It was an astounding moment, if you could imagine what they have gone through.
They were, initially, a pack of friends living, with content, in a Zoo, enjoying the attention and adoration of the New Yorkers. A series of unfortunate events brought them to Madagascar, Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, Monte Carlo, Rome and London, before they made it back to home, in the most painstakingly hilarious journey ever conceived. And there they are, standing outside the main gate of the Zoo, looking at the home they knew so well and longed to return.
IT seems right there, that their journey of being homelessness would come to an end. Yet unbeknown to them their adventure has just come to a junction. Suddenly, looking from outside, from another perspective, their home didn't seem so comfortable anymore. The walls, the cages and the fences back then, that they knew from young, that served as a form of protection, a shield, are now a monstrous divider that keep them from, not only the outside world, but also each other.
"The rock seemed smaller," proclaimed Alex.
"The murals [of the zebras] didn't quite catch the spirit," said Marty.
"Has there always been a wall that separate us?" asked Gloria to her lover, Melman.
Home seems to be the same home they once abandoned; the zookeepers, who perhaps imagined they would come back one day, made sure everything is in place just as when they left. However after traversing around the globe, after experiencing extreme liberation of roaming free on African savannah, after sticking with another bunch of animals and fighting for their freedom against Cruella de Vil II, it seems silly to go back to a cage where everything they had would be lost.
THE felicity that they once enjoyed, before the escape, was gone. The felicity, that arises from ignorance and nothing else - ignorance of the world outside, ignorance of the true intention of the fences and ignorance of what they are really capable of - disappeared like a poof of smoke right in front of their eyes.
How many times are we in such a state? To think that everything we possess at the moment is enough, and it's satisfying; that if we lost one tiny bit of it, we would die of misery and deprival. And then we worked hard, we prayed hard, that one day our felicity would be returned to us, restored like a perfect mirror. In the end, though, could we still be as happy as before, after going through the distresses and torments?
The true cause of sadness is not the lack of happiness. But rather, it is exactly because one has enjoyed happiness; and happiness, like any other experiences, could not be un-experienced, or unlearned or un-enjoyed. Sadness is because one missed the feelings of being happy, again.
The scruples of the felicity of ignorance are always difficult to ignore.
If you could ever choose, would you pick to be content being within your cage, enjoying the Felicity of Ignorance, or would you rather have your horizons widened, though at the same time risk losing your knowledge that you are happy and thus realising that your home, is really nothing but an enclosed zoo for all to see?
