The Little Prince - Lessons of Love and Reality

Dear Herbie,

I love looking at your icon because it reminds me of one of my favourite books. I recently found it in a second-hand store and on Saturday, my mini-retreat day, I re-read it.

These are some of the lessons I re-learned:

1) Adults must be careful not to discourage children. A child trying to communicate something important through a picture can be easily crushed and disheartened.

2) Adults need to learn to listen properly to children.

3) Each one of us lives on a separate planet, not just men are from Mars and women from Venus. We can choose to remain on our planet and remain delusional (everyone is an admirer, a subject, or a tiresome bother) or courageously voyage to other planets to meet and try to understand others.

4) There is always the choice of the snake. Is it a good idea to talk to them, and listen to the seduction of Thanatos?

5) "matters of consequence" are so unimportant when another being is distressed and needs to be heard and comforted.

6) A planet or a life needs to be well cared for every day. "Children, beware of the baobabs!" A tiny seed can grow innocuously into a plant which seems lovely but it can grow huge and split your life open. (I think of addictions, vicious personality traits, bad habits and the like - the wolves you feed.) Volcanoes need to be cleaned out daily - don't let anger smoulder and build up until it erupts and covers everyone with lava.

7) The fox teaches us that it is good to be tamed, even if it means we become vulnerable to loss. Whenever we look at the fields of wheat, we remember that though we will never see the Little Prince again, his hair was wheat-coloured and full of light... The fox reminds us that everything that is most real and important is invisible to the eye, that it is the time we "waste" caring for those we love that makes them so dear to us...

8) Water of life - being in the now, enjoying the fruit of our labour, being content to spend time working toward something and savouring it...

9) Singing, laughing or crying stars - loving someone changes everything in the universe for us, irrevocably. We will never be alone again though we may at times feel bereft and forsaken.

I never understood and enjoyed this as well as I did this time. I think at the same time of the sad irony that Saint-Exupery died quite young in a plane crash somewhere...

Namaste,

Nicole