A Look Inside My Head

The Little Prince

"You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed" -The Little Prince

I was reading a book called The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry and came across this line. I paused there and thought about it for a little bit. And in that time of thinking about that line did I realized that I has tears running down my face.

I didn't understand why it was happening until I read the sentence one more time out loud. Then it hit me and the water works came full force.

For those of you (probably only two people) who are reading this and dont know what the Little Prince is it is a story about a boy who travels away from his tiny planet. On his planet he has a rose that is vain and naive but the Little Prince loves her. But one day it becomes too much so he decides to go a travel to different planets. The last planet he travels to is Earth, maybe you have heard of this planet. There he meets a fox and they become friends. The fox goes on to tell the Little Prince that to be tamed means that you create ties and when one of you leaves it hurts the other because all they want is that connection. Now this is a very loosely written summary of part of this book and probably only makes sense to me.

I read through this part of the book not really thinking about what the fox was saying and thinking it was only relevant in this part. Boy was I wrong.

When I got to this one sentence it all hit me. Towards the end of the Little Prince's stay on Earth he meets a man who got stranded in the desert that he was in. When it was time for the Little Prince to go I came to realize that he tamed this man. To put it in better terms, he created ties and when he left the man was heartbroken, much like the fox when the Little Prince left him.

You may be wondering why I'm writing this and telling you about a book. Well I'm doing this because nothing I have ever read before has ever connected with me in such a way as this line did.

"You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed" can be interpreted as saying if you create ties be prepared to shed tears when it breaks.

This can apply to any sort of tie. Now this can be any form of bond ranging from friendship, to romantic, to even family.

Humans are fragile creatures. We fear being left alone... me fearing it probably a little more than others. We are scared to connect with people in any way with the fear of being left behind.

This may not be true for a lot of people but it definitely is for me. Friends have stabbed me in the back, I have been cheated on by past relationships and some family members have vanished from my life.

I have put up thick walls to protect myself from getting hurt again and I admit that they are thickest in the relationship department, but someone has managed to weasel their way through that wall and has all the power in the world to shatter it only then to leave me to build it thicker. This person has tamed me and it scares me. I am so tightly tied to him that, as selfish as this sounds, he is the one that would have to cut the ropes if he decides he doesn't want me anymore. And I am terrified of that.

I definitely risk tears when it comes to this taming. I can only hope that they are happy ones.