Have you ever had the feeling you weren’t sure about a decision? You know, those moments when you suddenly don’t know anymore what is better, what is the “right thing” to do, whether you should make changes or not?
Most of the time we want to make beneficial choices for ourselves or others, but we regularly get caught in delaying them because of our amazing ability to doubt. Doubts are constructive when they help us to clarify our thoughts. They tend to be destructive however, when we consider them more than the outcome of a potential result for a new life situation.
The more we think the more complex everything tends to get. This has always been like that and there is nothing new about it. There is chaos and darkness before the light; you can read it up in the Bible. Our common sense expressions say the same: “no pain, no gain”, “there is light at the end of the tunnel”, etc. Do achievements require sacrifices then? Let’s see how it happens in our daily lives.
So, on the one hand we become stuck in deliberations while on the other hand we make ourselves much more defenceless in regards to the emotions surrounding a potential decision. We keep on debating the ins and outs of it. Whatever we want to make our mind up about continues to pester us and we tend to struggle with the outcome. In this context we realise that philosophies become personal considerations about us and the world. It makes sense, thus, that the clearer we are with ourselves the brighter a picture we will build about the world with us in it. It is now quite logical that much depends on how we think of ourselves first and on how we think of the world surrounding us after. We are all philosophers and we do not need to have our names on book covers to promote a personal style. Our way of interacting, our way of talking, our way of being with others in society will tell more than any yellowing page in a book. Philosophies, like philosophers are alive and life changes all the time, not a single day is identical with another. It might not be a good idea to banish a philosophy into a book after all, because there it will neither change nor adapt to new ways of looking at the world! Can you see the importance of being flexible, supple and intellectually free in our own world before and beyond doctrines, laws and politics now? We must concentrate on our choice first, for us first; only then can we see a larger picture involving others.
How significant is it then to think of ourselves first? It is vital and unavoidable. We must do it; we must live by it and we must also encourage others to do the same. If we don’t insure our clarity, our security first, it will be very difficult to extend our safety net to others. And so, we can now more easily debate how our politicians look after us or pretend to do so. What do they know about themselves? What do they know about us? Are they honest about themselves? If they are not, what do they know about us? There are so many options and I am quite sure you have your own stories for comment!
Isn’t it just fascinating to realise how it appears complex to focus on important topics without knowing where we stand or who we are as a person? Do you know many people who know what their personality is like and how they are felt by others?
Maybe we should all make an effort to find out more about ourselves, how we relate to our own emotions, how we handle them and what could be wise or wiser in attitudes to display to others.
Our story today takes us to insight by a child, advice given to an adult:
Remember The Little Princeby author Antoine de Saint-Exupery, written in 1943?
Here is a synopsis of the story:
The narrator, an airplane pilot, crashes in the Sahara desert. The crash badly damages his airplane and leaves the narrator with very little food or water. As he is worrying over his predicament, he is approached by the little prince, a very serious little blond boy who asks the narrator to draw him a sheep. The narrator obliges, and the two become friends. The pilot learns that the little prince comes from a small planet that the little prince calls Asteroid 325 but that people on Earth call Asteroid B-612. The little prince took great care of this planet, preventing any bad seeds from growing and making sure it was never overrun by baobab trees. One day, a mysterious rose sprouted on the planet and the little prince fell in love with it. But when he caught the rose in a lie one day, he decided that he could not trust her anymore. He grew lonely and decided to leave. Despite last-minute reconciliation with the rose, the prince set out to explore other planets and cure his loneliness.
While journeying, the narrator tells us, the little prince passes by neighbouring asteroids and encounters for the first time the strange, narrow-minded world of grown-ups. On the first six planets the little prince visits, he meets a king, a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer, all of whom live alone and are overly consumed by their chosen occupations. Such strange behaviour both amuses and perturbs the little prince. He does not understand their need to order people around, to be admired, and to own everything. With the exception of the lamplighter, whose dogged faithfulness he admires, the little prince does not think much of the adults he visits, and he does not learn anything useful. However, he learns from the geographer that flowers do not last forever, and he begins to miss the rose he has left behind.
At the geographer’s suggestion, the little prince visits Earth, but he lands in the middle of the desert and cannot find any humans. Instead, he meets a snake who speaks in riddles and hints darkly that its lethal poison can send the little prince back to the heavens if he so wishes. The little prince ignores the offer and continues his explorations, stopping to talk to a three-petaled flower and to climb the tallest mountain he can find, where he confuses the echo of his voice for conversation. Eventually, the little prince finds a rose garden, which surprises and depresses him—his rose had told him that she was the only one of her kind.
The prince befriends a fox, who teaches him that the important things in life are visible only to the heart that his time away from the rose makes the rose more special to him, and that love makes a person responsible for the beings that one loves. The little prince realizes that, even though there are many roses, his love for his rose makes her unique and that he is therefore responsible for her. Despite this revelation, he still feels very lonely because he is so far away from his rose. The prince ends his story by describing his encounters with two men, a railway switchman and a salesclerk.
It is now the narrator’s eighth day in the desert, and at the prince’s suggestion, they set off to find a well. The water feeds their hearts as much as their bodies and the two share a moment of bliss as they agree that too many people do not see what is truly important in life. The little prince’s mind, however, is fixed on returning to his rose, and he begins making plans with the snake to head back to his planet. The narrator is able to fix his plane on the day before the one-year anniversary of the prince’s arrival on Earth, and he walks sadly with his friend out to the place the prince landed. The snake bites the prince, who falls noiselessly to the sand.
The narrator takes comfort when he cannot find the prince’s body the next day and is confident that the prince has returned to his asteroid. The narrator is also comforted by the stars, in which he now hears the tinkling of his friend’s laughter. Often, however, he grows sad and wonders if the sheep he drew has eaten the prince’s rose. The narrator concludes by showing his readers a drawing of the desert landscape and by asking us to stop for a while under the stars if we are ever in the area and to let the narrator know immediately if the little prince has returned.
As for the photo, please have a look at “The Eye of God”, a picture taken by the Hubble Telescope of the Helix Nebula in the constellation of Aquarius:
In love and light and insight
Mariana
www.mariana-amar.com |