You know what the problem with the world is? People. Every single problem in this world, absolutely all of them, could be made better if each person individually tried to make themselves better people. Everyone suffers when only one person decides to be a turd.
I couldn’t sleep last night again. I didn’t feel well. I sat up in bed and read ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. All of it. Everyone should be required to read that book. It’s so simple, so concisely constructed, and yet every time I’ve read it when I’ve had a problem, I find out what the root of that problem is. Sure, that hurts when I finally figure out what’s wrong, but I know it will help eventually.
The largest lesson in ‘The Little Prince’ was what hit me last night. The book is about a little boy who lives on a very small planet, where he lives alone, save for three volcanos, and a very precious rose. He attends to the rose, but he wishes to learn, because he realizes he does not know how to love his rose. So he embarks on a journey, visiting other planets inhabited by other people, in an effort to learn to understand. Eventually he ends up on Earth. He meets many people along his way, but the largest lesson is when he meets the Fox. The Little Prince, who has been alone on the Earth for a great deal of time, asks the Fox to play with him, because he is so unhappy. But the Fox replies that he cannot, saying, “I am not tamed.”
The Little Prince does not understand, and the Fox explains, “It is an act too often neglected. It means to establish ties… to me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world… My life is very monotonous. I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.”
Sounds nice, doesn’t it? I think that’s what everyone wants. To us, all of the world is like a thousand other worlds. We haven’t tamed it. One person we see on the street is like the hundreds of thousands of other people on the earth. We have tamed no one. “One only understands the things that one tames.”
What’s worse than that, is one-sided taming. To tame another, and not let yourself be tamed in return. It’s a useless and selfish relationship, one where the other will not feel your love. And I imagine that would hurt far greater than never having been tamed at all. It is selfish, and it is no way to live. Because if you do not let yourself be tamed, you will never understand another person. You will never truly understand how to love, be loved, and love others.
I think there are too many people in the world like that. Love is more than having someone love you. Love is more than having someone else be affectionate. In order to love, you must return it, or it does not exist. And you must return it – most importantly of all – selflessly. Then you will be tamed, then you will need someone like The Little Prince needed The Fox. The sun will come to shine on your life, and the steps of others will be music to you.
That’s what The Little Prince learned, he finally learned how to love his rose, and why he loved his rose. The most beautiful passage in the book is this, when The Little Prince comes to a rose garden, full of other roses that look just like his:
“You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: beacuse it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”
The rose was not his because the rose served him. The rose was not his because it pampered him day and night. The rose was not his because the rose loved him. The rose only became his when he served her, when he joined her in the affection and understanding. Love was never meant to be one-sided.
If the world understood this, we would all be a lot happier, we would all understand each other. We would all understand life. As the Fox says, “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”