The wisdom of “The Little Prince”

All over the world There are thousands of people marked by this book: “The Little Prince”.

And in front of him, the story of many of the readers is always the same: they thought it was a fairy tale, princes, princesses, witches and everything else.

The great surprise was having found in its pages with a beautiful metaphor about love, friendship and life.

If someone asks me, I answer that My favorite part is the meeting of the Little Prince with the fox. I learned it by heart and repeated it in full on a bus to my first love. Line, by line, tasting those that fascinated me…

He thought I wasn’t in my right mind. But he still remembers it and says that maybe that’s the reason we’re still friends, after so many years.

It is incredible all the lessons and messages we can extract from this wonderful book. There is so much wisdom that awaits within its pages…

Below I show you some of the most beautiful messages full of feelings that “The Little Prince” has:

Learn to approach others

There are sensational episodes in the book. Like when the fox, after probing the boy, looks at him for a long time and says “tame me.” The first time I read it I felt that emotion that comes when you experience the power of a revelation.

That “domestication” in which the fox and the Little Prince played each other, was above all a journey of tact and patience: learning to approach others slowly. Nothing to do with what we witness in these hectic times.

Relationships between people are made and broken with an ease that is sometimes overwhelming. The emotional ties seem to have acquired a certain industrial imprint. Relationships are valued for their usefulness and discarded when they are not very profitable.

This applies mainly to couple relationships, which are highly unstable today.. There doesn’t seem to be much interest in taking that “domestication” journey that The Little Prince talks about with the fox.

The gradual approach is even seen as an obsolete practice, why wait? many say. There is a certain voracity that is expressed as the desire to drink the other in a single sip.

But The slow, conscious and sincere meeting does not involve haste, but rather recognition and respect.

The importance of rituals

In that same passage from “The Little Prince”, the theme of ritual is inspiring. “Something very forgotten by men,” says the fox.

And adds that Rituals are a way to make one moment not look like another, May special moments reach their true value. Not at any time, not at any time, not in any way.

Rites They allow the heart to prepare to feel with all intensity what is coming. Let the senses be attentive. Let the mind be open to wonder.

This doesn’t seem to have much place these days either. Rituals tend to become standardized. We have turned rituals into occasions for consumption.

Valentine’s Day or Christmas have more to do with shopping, gifts and public relations than with true commemorations. Businesses even have pre-designed plans for the occasion, to which we adapt without questioning much about their true meaning.

Rituals make our heart beat stronger, only if they include some kind of discovery. When they are the opportunity to take a new step on that path towards the unexplored world of another human being, or a group of people, who have true meaning in our lives.

How much happiness we stop experiencing due to rush and automatism…

Nothing makes sense on its own

Something very beautiful in this chapter of The Little Prince is the meaning of meaning and goodbye. Paradoxical as it may seem, Separation is the backbone of this journey of rapprochement.

Why “tame” another, if in the end you are just passing through and at some point you will have to leave? “You haven’t gained much,” the boy tells the fox. But he once again deciphers the contradiction: “I win because of the color of the wheat.”

He is not referring so much to the gold of the wheat fields in the fields, but to the color of his new friend’s hair.

From the beginning the fox had warned that this wheat, which previously meant nothing, with “domestication” was going to become a rumor that would remind him of the Little Prince’s passage through his life. The wheat fields now made sense.

A nice metaphor to mark that The meaning of the world around us is given by the experiences that associate us with it.

In other words, The entire planet and what makes it up has no meaning on its own.. Its value and reason for being are given to each person.

That’s why the saying that “nothing makes sense” is literally true. You give it the meaning. And, as in The Little Prince, it often appears as the echo of that which is no longer there.

And finally, this chapter of The Little Prince ends with a farewell.

It is there when the fox gives his greatest gift to the one who knew how to tame him: a truth.

“Only with the heart you can see well. The essential is invisible to the eyes”, He tells. And the child repeats it to keep it in his memory.

In the book and in life, this is how the bonds that last forever begin.

Image courtesy of Ramiro Figueroa