Shrek has announced a new film! Shrek 5 is on its way, featuring Cameron Diaz, Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. After 16 years, the huge, green ogre is returning with his bestie, Donkey, and we cannot contain ourselves. But the thing is, there are many meaningful quotes from Shrek to follow in everyday life.
Things are more than they appear
Sometimes, we have to read between the lines. How something looks can be so much deeper than how it looks on the surface. Social media plays a huge part in how a relationship, money circumstance, job or life looks – but they’re not capturing the difficult moments they faced along the way.
Shrek tells Donkey this and reminds him to use his instinct and memory. By meditating every day as humans (not ogres and donkeys!), we form a stronger mind-body connection and can use our intuitions to not only keep us safe, but to help us make important life decisions.
That’ll do donkey, that’ll do
Acceptance of friendship and its simple, beautiful moments is emphasized whenever Shrek tells his best friend, Donkey, “That’ll do Donkey, that’ll do.” It shows how we don’t need to make these big, grand gestures to please our loved ones, because it really is simple things – like being there – that we truly need.
The small things really are the big things in life. Sometimes, the big things like a holiday and a wedding may be important, but it’s the tiny details within those moments that matter: the laughs on the plane trip there, the cutting of the cake and smearing it on each other’s faces, our loved ones being there to cry with us.
best friends forgive each other
“That’s what best friends do, they forgive each other.” Forgiveness is never about the other person, it is always about you. Sometimes, our egos and pride stop us from truly forgiving someone as we don’t feel they deserve it. However, by forgiving, you’re removing the hate in your heart and replacing it with love.
By forgiving and forgetting, we learn from our mistakes and start to develop deeper bonds with others. There aren’t any lifetimes where we go through life without hurting someone else, unless we spend an inauthentic life where all we do is try to please others, and abandon our own human needs.
This is the part where you run away
Shrek would often push Donkey away when he was nasty and later felt bad. He expected people who loved him to leave him, mainly because he’s been bullied for being and looking like an Ogre (something he can’t control) his entire life. The same way our self-worth feels lowered when someone belittles us, Shrek is believing in his past traumas.
He now internalises that feeling, allowing his past to dictate how he feels in the current moment. Shrek telling Donkey to run away is him using his past as a protection mechanism to avoid getting hurt. Doing this keeps his ego and his mind safe – but isn’t the beauty of being human to feel a variety of good and ‘bad’ emotions?