The baobabs and the Little Prince (hidden fears)

We are sure that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous book, “The Little Prince”, is one of your favorites. If so, it is very possible that you remember one of his fears, one of the fears that the young protagonist used to suffer almost obsessively: baobabs and The Little Prince.

As he himself explained, the entire soil on the planet was infested with baobab seeds. And something like that was a danger, since if one did not get rid of them in time, the entire ground would be perforated by their roots. The baobabs would soon grow like titanic giants, huge monsters that would immediately collapse such a small planet as yours. Until it explodes. And everything, absolutely everything, would disappear.

And then how to get rid of that danger? – It’s a matter of discipline – explained the Little Prince. Routine. When one finishes washing in the morning, he also has to carefully clean his planet. Those small bushes where the baobabs already grow must be regularly uprooted, taking care to distinguish them well from the rose bushes.. Because rose bushes are good, beautiful. While baobabs are dangerous. It is a very tedious job, but easy.”

What conclusion can we draw from this idea? The baobabs and the little prince did not get along at all. According to this story they are our fears. Our negative thoughts, those that we should not feed and that we must know how to get rid of in time. Let’s talk about it today, from the interesting perspective of the famous character of Saint-Exupéry.

Fears and cognitive distortions

The baobabs and the Little Prince show us that we all have a fear. Or maybe several. Fear of loneliness, fear of being rejected, of failing. Fear of the unexpected, of snakes, of clowns, fear of what we cannot control. As humans, it is common to feel and experience the emotion of fear.

Evolutionarily it has a very simple purpose: That of surviving. Flee from what hurts us to guarantee our survival. However, it is necessary to ask ourselves the following question: Should we always escape from what hurts us? Sometimes you have to know how to cope.

We all live with our fears in a more or less effective way. If we know how to control and manage them properly, they will not interrupt our lives to make ourselves prisoners of these dimensions, because that is where the real risk of fear is.

If I fear failure I will never start any project, if I am afraid of the unknown I will never leave my comfort zone. If I have an irrational fear of the unexpected, I may choose to lock myself at home until, little by little, I become agoraphobic.

If we let our reality become “infested with baobab seeds” little by little, they will grow unstoppably.. By the time we lose our sense of control and allow fears to overcome us, the baobabs will have grown so enormously that our little planet will also end up collapsing. Bursting out.

Before it was a big tree, the baobab was small

Let us now remember an interesting moment in Saint-Exupéry’s novel. The pilot and the Little Prince talk about the need to eliminate the baobabs, at which point our protagonist asks if the lambs could also eat the baobab bushes. To which, the pilot corrects him and tells him that baobabs are not bushes, but giant trees, trees as big as churches.

It would take a whole herd of posh to destroy them. What’s more, you would need to put an elephant on top of another around your planet to be able to finish off the baobabs. Although at this point, the Little Prince added something with great success: Before being a giant tree, the baobab is small. A little seed.

So why not throw them away in time, when they are still harmless? If we allow our fears to become great, there will come a day when they will overcome us and completely immobilize us. So the best thing is to maintain a simple daily routine.

A cleaning and growth routine: Feed all those positive thoughts and dimensions of your life, water the “roses” of your personal universe by discarding the weeds of baobab.

Look in the mirror and convince yourself that everything you see is immensely great and positive. Dress your face with a smile and shelter your heart with a simple hope, every project will be worth it, every dream is good fuel with which to start walking. Never let those baobab seeds germinate and collapse your little planet. It is not worth feeding the negative or what hurts us.

Do you agree with this story about the baobabs and the Little Prince?

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