The Little Prince

One of the most precious and famous classics in history around the world must definitely be “The Little Prince” by French aristocrat, writer, and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Despite being perceived as a children tale, Antoine expressed that wasn’t the purpose of his novel and was not intended for kids at all. Actually, the book represents many of his personal experiences and the little prince, who remained forever tethered to Antoine, experienced a terribly similar fate as him, disappearing without a trace. This mysticism has become the novel’s signature.

The book talks about some very meaningful concepts of human nature and the human experience , viewed through the blue sparkling eyes of a little charming innocent child. I believe we all have a precious little child inside us, our inner child never leaves but sometimes we are “too busy with real life” as one of the characters expresses in the book to which the little prince has a magnificent answer: “what could be more important than the fate of my rose.” Sometimes we get caught up in the mundane parts of life and we mistake them for the most essential when in reality what’s most important is that which we are always running away from, hiding from, and denying ourselves the right to, it all comes down to love. We make ourselves believe that to be happy we need money and travel and some other hollow ambitions and I say hollow because once we have experienced them all we understand it is all futile without love. And when I say love I’m talking about love in general as a state of being, not a person or a place. Although sometimes we realize that we didn’t appreciate someone or something enough when we had it, just as the prince with his rose.

One of the most beautiful insights of this book for me is the idea of domestication. In the novel, the fox’s secret is that we become forever responsible for that which we have domesticated. To me this represents unconditional love, once we are able to experience this kind of love we cannot unlove someone, it will forever be part of us, that love. And there’s nothing we can do about it. As humans this is something we struggle with because sometimes relationships don’t last forever but our love does and it’s annoying for us, we want to move on and forget and start a new life from zero. Sometimes that is not possible. In truth, if we let our heart experience unconditional love, that love is going to be part of us forever even if that person is no longer part of our lives.

In the book, the prince travels to many different planets only to realize that none of them brought him happiness and that maybe he had underestimated his little planet and his petulant rose, which he at one point didn’t think twice about leaving behind. I think one of the major morals in the book is to appreciate what we have when we have it, living each moment fully without worrying about what we don’t have but instead, treasuring what we do have. When the little prince discovers there are hundreds of other roses like his, his first thought is that his rose was not unique at all but is later when he realizes his rose was important to him because of all the time he spent taking her of her. I think sometimes we don’t realize how important and unique are our own gifts, possessions, perspectives, or the people in our lives and we exist in the perpetual bettering of ourselves and everything in our lives but the thing is we are never satisfied. So when is it going to be enough for us to stop and appreciate what we are and have… hopefully before we are contemplating the snake that is about to bite us and send us to the eternal land in the heavens.

For these reasons, The Little Prince has become my hero and my favorite fictional character, so much so that I believe him mine and he's now part of my heart and soul. He in a way, has domesticated me without even trying. And sometimes I even contemplate the possibility that he is somewhere up there smiling back at us. After all, in a Universe of infinite possibilities and full of daily impossibilities, there are some perfectly good probabilities.