Safe & Sound

“People where you live,” the little prince said, “grow five thousand roses in one garden… yet they don’t find what they’re looking for…

And the little prince added, “But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”

One of my favourite books in the entire world is Le Petite Prince. One of my goals is to add an English and French copy to my book collection.

It reminds me of a very simple time in my life, when my young self read the French novella as part of a school project & I often told a dear friend that I needed her to “Dessine-Moi un mouton.”

The imagery speaks to me & I would say 80% of my blog’s ideals & content comes from this little French book (well, also Burton, random quotes on the Internet, ads on eBay, et al). Chances are, if I’ve sat & waxed about life, the search for happiness, etc. I’ve probably been reading this book…again.

I often speak of the heart knowing what’s best for us, which is the lesson found in Le Petite Prince

(Spoilers ahead)

The prince falls deeply in love with the rose, who seemingly rejects him, as she is quite vain. The prince travels to many planets & learns the lesson that men often lead hard lives & prefer to live alone and desolate. Finally, the prince learns from a fox that while his beloved rose seemed so common & pointless to the world, he had “tamed” his beautiful rose, loved & protected her & that’s what made her so special. His love for her made her special. It wasn’t until the Rose’s vain & flippant nature drove the prince to leave that she realized her true love for the Prince & was heartbroken that she felt her actions had forever cost her the person that made her whole.

“In those days, I didn’t understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contadictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.”

I guess it always struck a nerve with me that the prince saw something so amazing in such a common…thing. It was so beautiful, that someone could love despite countless rejections & be hurt so frequently, but his pure love remained. There must be some comfort in knowing that regardless of how common, or normal, or flawed, or vain, that someone finds you loveable. There must be some sense of joy in knowing that while the rest of the world sees you as simply a common…thing, one person sees you as their rose. While the Prince clearly loved his rose far more than she him, she truly did love the Prince. However, she allowed her vanity, her want to be admired by many, her inability to apologize for her hurtful nature push him away. When she was forced to finally face a life without the Prince loving her, even from afar, she was broken, even though no matter where he went, the Prince still loved her.

Because in the end, it was the Prince’s love that made her special, that brought out the good. This inspires most of my thoughts on love, what we look for, the idea that its the actions we focus on, not the words, as words contain so many lies, but actions are rooted in fact. You search for what you need, no matter how hard you pretend it isn’t true. Much like the Prince desperately tries to escape his beloved through running, meeting the Fox, his responsibility to her never waned & he always sought her out, humans always go back to the thing that makes us truly whole, even though we deny it. I guess it’s kind of funny that I have taken so many ideals from a children’s book, but perhaps the best lessons are childlike. Perhaps we should all look for our Petite Prince, who ignores our commonness, our vanity, our overall suckiness & simply sees the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen. Because once we have it, we’ll always long for it, as truthfully, we’ll know that’s what makes us whole.

“I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings.”

But, that’s me, the girl who takes all of her important thoughts on relationships from Burton films, French novellas & other random places. I guess I shall always just enjoy that sort of whimsy. For I don’t want to become one of the dreaded grown ups the snake warned me about:

“All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”