The Wisdom of the The Little Prince

This quote from the delightful and touching story The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exuper is one of the key themes of the story.  And as the Fox in the story reminds us, it is one that many adults have forgotten.

As we become adults, we slowly fall further and further into fear, limitation, and conformity and lose the purity and innocence that we had as a child.  We no longer see the world as it is. What we see, and how we respond, is increasingly colored by our accumulating doubts and fears.  We become blinded to what really matters and fail to see the beauty and innocence all around us, in every little thing.

An important symbol and metaphor that is found in the story of The Little Prince is that of the Rose.  For Saint-Exupery, it seems that the Rose represents love. And perhaps he was inferring we are all like individual Roses — all much the same but yet each unique and beautiful.  And all each containing and sharing the same source of love deep within our souls.

Deep in our souls, we are all yearning to express the love that invisibly binds us all.  Yet, most of us have lost touch with that love deep within, we have lost touch with our heart.  Not because we've actually lost it, but only because the noise of the world and the chattering of our analytical mind and ego has distracted us.  You can't lose your connection to that love, you can only forget that it's there and block its expression.

We are all variations on the same Rose, we all share the invisible bond of that loving source within us.  But for the Rose that each of us truly are to blossom, to more fully express the love that we are into this world, we must become more child-like again, in the sense of seeing and responding to the world without all the intellectual and emotional baggage we've accumulated — and it's a truly wonderful thing! we must have an open and clear heart and mind.  As the Fox in the story said, People have forgotten this truth. But you mustn't forget it. You're responsible for your rose.

In this beautiful garden we call our world, all the roses are beginning to blossom, and the pedals are opening — and it's a truly wonderful thing!

All my love,