The drive was far more pleasant than usual. This is because I usually make the drive alone, but this time I had my dad with me. We talked about many things: electrical ground wires, airplane wings, religion, and stimulus money just to name a few. So, while I hate long drives, this one was fun and entertaining.
While we were driving together I read The Little Prince for the first time. This book is billed as a kid's book, and it is certainly written like a kid's book, but it is so much more than that. It's a very special book. Every page is loaded with the unfettered clarity of a child's thoughts, with the clean grasp of foundational principles that children enjoy, but often give up as a rite of passage into adulthood....and as I was leaving Provo, I needed to be reminded of some of the basics. About the value of love and friendship, and even loss, and how they are all intertwined. The Little Prince is about all of this, and it was the perfect book to read while my heart was heavy with memories of Provo.
So, I decided I better share that book here on my blog. Only parts of it of course, but enough for you to see why the book is so powerful; I'll limit my post to parts of the book that deal with love and friendship.
Before I begin, here's a little context for the passages I'll share:
The story is about a pilot who is stranded in the desert. He meets a boy there known as "The little prince." The little prince lives on an asteroid. The asteroid is so small it's barely bigger than him. He has a flower on that asteroid. That flower thinks highly of itself and demands a lot of him, and he eventually leaves the flower and the asteroid in search of adventure. He visits many other planets during his adventures, and eventually ends up on earth, where he meets the pilot that wrote the book. His interactions with various people and his retelling of those interactions to the pilot make up (at least most of) the book.
So here we go. Oh, and just so you know, I'll mark all my interjections with an asterisk to avoid confusion.
As the boy leaves the asteroid this is his goodbye to the flower....
"Goodbye" he said to the flower.
But she did not answer him.
"Goodbye," he repeated.
The flower coughed, but not because she had a cold.
"I've been silly" she told him at last. "I ask your forgiveness. Try to be happy."
He was surprised that there were no reproaches. He stood there, quite bewildered, holding the glass bell in midair. He failed to understand this calm sweetness.
"Of course I love you, " the flower told him. It was my fault you never knew. It doesn't matter. But you were just as silly as I was. Try to be happy...Then she added"Don't hang around like this; it's irritating. You made up your mind to leave. Now go." For she didn't want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower...
*Then the boy says later about the flower:
In those days I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should have never run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.
*From this interchange the book sets up a very valuable lesson on love and friendship. The instruction necessary to appreciate the boy's relationship with the flower comes from his meeting a fox.
The story goes like this:
"I'm a fox," the fox said.
"Come and play with me" the little prince proposed. "I'm feeling so sad."
"I can't play with you," the fox said. I'm not tamed.
"What does tamed mean."
"It's something that has been too often neglected. It means, 'to create ties.'..."
"'To create ties'?"
"That's right," the fox said. For me you're only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. For you I'm only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we'll need each other. You'll be the only boy in the world for me. I'll be the only fox in the world for you..."
"I'm beginning to understand," the little prince said. "There's a flower...I think she's tamed me..."
"Possibly," the fox said. "Anyway, I'm rather bored. But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I'll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Other footsteps send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music. And then, look! You see the wheat fields over there? I don't eat bread. For me wheat is of no use whatever. Wheat fields say nothing to me. Which is sad. But you have hair the color of gold. So it will be wonderful, once you've tamed me! The wheat, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I'll love the sound of the wind in the wheat..."
"Please...tame me!" he said.
"What do I have to do?" asked the little prince.
"You have to be very patient," the fox answered. "First you'll sit down a little ways away from me, over there, in the grass. I'll watch you out of the corner of my eye, and you won't say anything. Language is the source of misunderstandings. But day by day, you'll be able to sit closer..."
The next day the little prince returned.
"It would have been better to return at the same time," the fox said. "For instance, if you come at four in the afternoon, I'll begin to be happy by three. The closer it gets to four, the happier I'll feel. By four I'll be all excited and worried; I'll discover what it costs to be happy! But if you come at any old time, I'll never know when I should prepare my heart. There must be rites."
That was how the little prince tamed the fox. And when the time to leave was near:
"Ah!" the fox said. "I shall weep."
"It's your own fault, "the little prince said. "I never wanted to do you any harm, but you insisted that I tame you..."
"Yes, of course," the fox said.
"But you're going to weep!" said the little prince.
"Yes, of course," the fox said.
"Then you get nothing out of it?"
"I get something," the fox said, "because of the color of the wheat."
*After all this the little prince learns what gives things value. On his journey he saw many flowers like his (the flower on his planet that he thought was one of a kind was a rose). This made him doubt that his rose was special. But after he tamed the fox, he knew better. So he finds a patch of roses and tells them:
"You're not at all like my rose. You're nothing at all yet," he told them. "No one has tamed you and you haven't tamed anyone. You're the way my fox was. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand others. But I've made him my friend, and now he's the only fox in all the world." You're lovely, but you're empty," he went on. "One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think you my rose looked just like you. But my rose is all her own, is more important than all you together, since she's the one I've watered. She's the one I put under a glass. She's the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."
*Then the prince returns to the fox, and the fox drives the whole lesson home by saying,"Anything essential is invisible to the eyes, it's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important, people have forgotten this truth, but you musn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. You're responsible for your rose."
***********
I don't know, I think that's a really precise and beautiful way of explaining what we all mean to each other. How and why we value people. How love works. Why it's possible to be married to just one person when there are so many countless possibilities promising better compatibility or options. It all comes down to working for them and giving yourself, to being tamed by them. By doing this you become responsible for them and they for you.
It's so simple when it's written down in a child's book.
Of course I recommend reading the entire book. It's very short. But if you read it with the right attitude it will teach you a lot.
Anyway, I better go. I hope you all have a great day.
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