Marcel The Shell With Shoes On is a tiny conch shell who wears shoes. He is small but mighty and is inspiring many. Originally created by actress Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp as a stop-motion animation character in a series of video shorts, his story was expanded to a full-length animated film called Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.(1)
When the movie begins, Marcel is feeling lonely. All of his friends and family are gone, except his grandmother, and he misses them greatly. He doesn’t know where they are but he yearns to re-create the close-knit community he lost. Eventually, he gets the courage to connect with the big, wide world for help with locating them. It’s a huge endeavor given that he is very tiny and has never left his house, but he has hope. And he finds help.
Throughout his adventures, he offers many insights to the audience. Marcel doesn’t see himself as any sort of teacher; he simply shares his inner thoughts and feelings about his life experiences with honesty and earnestness. In his innocence, he is actually quite wise.
Without giving away too much, Marcel’s story does have a happy ending and he shares his final, deep insight about life in a scene where he describes sitting by an open window and feeling a breeze blow through his conch shell. I’ll let Marcel’s words speak for themselves in his very unique and sweet voice:
And one day, I was just sitting, and the wind blew in and it blew just over the top of my head in such a way…and it made a beautiful whistling sound…
It connected me… to everything, because if I wasn’t there, the sound would never exist.
And I felt like everything was in pieces, and then I stood there and suddenly, we were one large instrument.
I like to go there a lot because it reminds me that I’m not just one separate piece rattling around in this place, but that I’m part of a whole.
And I truly enjoy the sound of myself connected to everything.
Try this meditation with your soul: Ask to feel the resonance of yourself connected with everything. Then ask to feel the resonance of your unique “sound” connected to everything. This is the essence of your unique expression as your Source-self.
When we truly know ourselves as One with All, then we know ourselves as the magnificence of all of creation. May we each remember the beauty of ourselves connected to everything!
Image by Marc Pascual from Pixabay
(1) Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, based on characters created by Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate, A24, 2022.