24th
What would Momo think?
Whenever I consider buying toys for our girls, I think about the following passage from Michael Ende’s book, Momo (this is the same guy who wrote The Neverending Story). I am deeply affected by this book, but this passage holds an incredibly practical wisdom for the world in which we live.
Immer häufiger kam es vor, daß Kinder allerlei Spielzeug brachten, mit dem man nicht wirklich spielen konnte, […] Es waren natürlich sehr teure Spielsachen, wie Momos Freunde nie welche besessen hatten - und Momo selbst gar nicht. Vor allem waren alle diese Dinge so vollkommen bis in jede kleinste Einzelheit hinein, daß man sich dabei gar nichts mehr selber vorzustellen brauchte. […] Darum kehrten sie schließlich doch wieder zu ihren alten Spielen zurück, bei denen ihnen ein paar Schachteln, ein zerrissenes Tischtuch, ein Maulwurfshügel oder eine Handvoll Steinchen genügten. Dabei konnte man sich alles vorstellen.
(My translation: Increasingly, children brought all sorts of toys, with which one could not really play. They were of course very expensive toys, the likes of which Momo’s friends - and of course Momo herself - had never owned. Most remarkable about these toys was the fact that they were so complete, down to the very last detail, that there was nothing left to imagine. Therefore [the children] always went back to their old games, for which a couple of old boxes, a ripped dish cloth, a mole hill or a handful of stones were enough. With those things you could imagine anything.)
