the taming of people
This was supposed to be posted a while ago, but I wanted to edit it to feel complete. It's about The Little Prince, and much of the content of this post was first written in an email to a friend explaining what I meant by saying I wanted to tame people. I showed him Chapter 21 of the book, but he didn't seem to glean exactly the same ideas I did, so I wrote out what I meant for him.
In addition to the idea of taming that it elucidates, I have said to some of you before that The Little Prince is a bit like what I would want to write. I almost don't think I could write anything so perfect in its simplicity. It is admirable in many ways: its beauty as a story, its tapping into the complex power of myth and the true ideas it hides in itself of life. Right now, I can't quite imagine how I could write anything so beautiful, but someday, God willing, my thoughts and diligence will reach that point where I produce something I can be happy with.
*
First, I link Chapter 21 where the fox appears so that you can see how the story goes.
*
These are the things that struck me most about the chapter:
1) What parties gain from taming each other
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."
*
"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."
*
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . . But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince..."Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields."
What parties to a taming gain is meaning in life. If love is the greatest of all things, then it should follow that the most worthy things in life come from relationships of love and acceptance. This love is like an unconditional promise of acceptance of the other, and of hope for the other to be the best they can be. The creation of the relationship itself makes both parties special to the other. It possesses the power to makes things outside in the world take on memories of happiness and sadness and being. It is what makes the world seem warm, nostalgic and beautiful.
2) Effort is spent in the taming
"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."
"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more.
Taming doesn't come easy. It takes patience to tame a person. It requires willingness to commit to devote time to understand and accommodate the other person. To first say, "I'm willing to risk that much of my limited time on earth for you."
3) What is special about the tamed
Here we'll backtrack a bit to the chapter before, where the little prince actually came across five thousand roses in a garden. Back near the start of our story, before the little prince traveled to other planets, he had a rose, who deceived him that she was the only one rose in the world. So when he sees five thousand roses together...
And he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!
*
"I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose. A common rose, and three volcanoes that come up to my knees--and one of them perhaps extinct forever . . . That doesn't make me a very great prince . . ."
And he lay down in the grass and cried.
Then in Chapter 21, the little prince comes back to the five thousand roses with a new lens:
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
*
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
You see, the rose by herself and the fox by himself were not special. They weren't particularly beautiful amongst the rest of the roses and foxes.
But they were important to the little prince.
It was the commitment of time and effort that the little prince had spent on them that made them so special. At first, this sounds like an insult to the rose and the fox. But it is not. Because how many people in the universe are the best, the most quick-witted or beautiful? It is the experiences with them that make them unique. It is the fact that you have loved them and given up for them and stayed by their side. The love you have given to them makes them beautiful to you. Somehow, illogically, in your decision to care for them and to sacrifice for them, they become immeasurably important to you.
At this stage though, I would like to point out that I don't think the little prince was right to make the other five thousand roses feel embarrassed. Those roses would have been just as beautiful to him if he had tamed them. Just as parents love their own children; so should they try to love the children of others because those children would be just as important if tamed; and if they have not been tamed, that is something that they should crave as humans, and that they should have experience of. If the little prince had been a little wiser, he would know that although he didn't yet feel their value as though he had personally tamed them, how important they could be once they were tamed, by virtue of the fact that they were sentient beings who could yield to being tamed. Just their capacity to be tamed, should make one want to tame them because they would not know the beauty of life if they were never tamed.
4) Finally, the responsibility of taming
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .
And here I referred to a book my friend lent me, that had this idea: Is it fair to tame those whom you cannot keep your promises to, in that you have not enough time for them or that you will never be able to give yourself to them fully? Would it be better to treat them with a distant politeness? Is there some sort of responsibility to, if you cannot continue giving for a sustained period with the same intensity, to limit your responsibility by putting up barriers to spending time with each other? And I thought that perhaps this might be the right thing to do, for feelings between humans develop very naturally.
But then, the little prince and the fox tamed and were tamed although they only knew each other a while. And after it all, when the little prince had to go, the fox would still have wanted to be tamed because of what would have remained with him of the little prince. So I am still thinking about this.
Also, it is difficult to be responsible for something forever. The fox and the rose and the little prince were all mortal. If all of us are human, who are we to fool ourselves that we can achieve the immortal? We cannot guarantee the future, that we will even be around to be responsible. So perhaps, all you can do is your best with the time you've got, and then you have to learn to pass it and the future on to someone you trust all the more, who to me is the Creator of all tame-able beings, he who shaped them with care and faithful yearning for their flourishing.
*
I ended the email like that, more or less, with edits added now after maturation with time.
I don't think I've discovered all the secrets of The Little Prince yet. But I hope that all of you can see a bit of why I admire it.
Also, I hope that all of us can learn to tame and be tamed, mindful of all its titanic effects in the worlds it creates.
In addition to the idea of taming that it elucidates, I have said to some of you before that The Little Prince is a bit like what I would want to write. I almost don't think I could write anything so perfect in its simplicity. It is admirable in many ways: its beauty as a story, its tapping into the complex power of myth and the true ideas it hides in itself of life. Right now, I can't quite imagine how I could write anything so beautiful, but someday, God willing, my thoughts and diligence will reach that point where I produce something I can be happy with.
*
First, I link Chapter 21 where the fox appears so that you can see how the story goes.
*
These are the things that struck me most about the chapter:
1) What parties gain from taming each other
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."
*
"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."
*
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . . But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince..."Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields."
What parties to a taming gain is meaning in life. If love is the greatest of all things, then it should follow that the most worthy things in life come from relationships of love and acceptance. This love is like an unconditional promise of acceptance of the other, and of hope for the other to be the best they can be. The creation of the relationship itself makes both parties special to the other. It possesses the power to makes things outside in the world take on memories of happiness and sadness and being. It is what makes the world seem warm, nostalgic and beautiful.
2) Effort is spent in the taming
"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."
"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more.
Taming doesn't come easy. It takes patience to tame a person. It requires willingness to commit to devote time to understand and accommodate the other person. To first say, "I'm willing to risk that much of my limited time on earth for you."
3) What is special about the tamed
Here we'll backtrack a bit to the chapter before, where the little prince actually came across five thousand roses in a garden. Back near the start of our story, before the little prince traveled to other planets, he had a rose, who deceived him that she was the only one rose in the world. So when he sees five thousand roses together...
And he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!
*
"I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose. A common rose, and three volcanoes that come up to my knees--and one of them perhaps extinct forever . . . That doesn't make me a very great prince . . ."
And he lay down in the grass and cried.
Then in Chapter 21, the little prince comes back to the five thousand roses with a new lens:
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
*
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
You see, the rose by herself and the fox by himself were not special. They weren't particularly beautiful amongst the rest of the roses and foxes.
But they were important to the little prince.
It was the commitment of time and effort that the little prince had spent on them that made them so special. At first, this sounds like an insult to the rose and the fox. But it is not. Because how many people in the universe are the best, the most quick-witted or beautiful? It is the experiences with them that make them unique. It is the fact that you have loved them and given up for them and stayed by their side. The love you have given to them makes them beautiful to you. Somehow, illogically, in your decision to care for them and to sacrifice for them, they become immeasurably important to you.
At this stage though, I would like to point out that I don't think the little prince was right to make the other five thousand roses feel embarrassed. Those roses would have been just as beautiful to him if he had tamed them. Just as parents love their own children; so should they try to love the children of others because those children would be just as important if tamed; and if they have not been tamed, that is something that they should crave as humans, and that they should have experience of. If the little prince had been a little wiser, he would know that although he didn't yet feel their value as though he had personally tamed them, how important they could be once they were tamed, by virtue of the fact that they were sentient beings who could yield to being tamed. Just their capacity to be tamed, should make one want to tame them because they would not know the beauty of life if they were never tamed.
4) Finally, the responsibility of taming
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .
And here I referred to a book my friend lent me, that had this idea: Is it fair to tame those whom you cannot keep your promises to, in that you have not enough time for them or that you will never be able to give yourself to them fully? Would it be better to treat them with a distant politeness? Is there some sort of responsibility to, if you cannot continue giving for a sustained period with the same intensity, to limit your responsibility by putting up barriers to spending time with each other? And I thought that perhaps this might be the right thing to do, for feelings between humans develop very naturally.
But then, the little prince and the fox tamed and were tamed although they only knew each other a while. And after it all, when the little prince had to go, the fox would still have wanted to be tamed because of what would have remained with him of the little prince. So I am still thinking about this.
Also, it is difficult to be responsible for something forever. The fox and the rose and the little prince were all mortal. If all of us are human, who are we to fool ourselves that we can achieve the immortal? We cannot guarantee the future, that we will even be around to be responsible. So perhaps, all you can do is your best with the time you've got, and then you have to learn to pass it and the future on to someone you trust all the more, who to me is the Creator of all tame-able beings, he who shaped them with care and faithful yearning for their flourishing.
*
I ended the email like that, more or less, with edits added now after maturation with time.
I don't think I've discovered all the secrets of The Little Prince yet. But I hope that all of you can see a bit of why I admire it.
Also, I hope that all of us can learn to tame and be tamed, mindful of all its titanic effects in the worlds it creates.
Labels: books, friends, life, love, taming, the little prince
I love this post a lot, Alaris! Every line resonates within me. I have to pick up The Little Prince soon.
I understand that this blog is private, but if you don't mind, I'd like to copy this post to my tumblr (will not link to your blog, but will state that it is written by you)! Let me know if it is ok with you :)
Cheryl
Posted by
Cheryl C |
10:45 pm
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