The Little Prince's Rose

A phone call rang when I was about to compose this post. A friend of mine had read my post titled: Quite a Frustration and she called me to give me some well-intentioned feedback. Of course, there were other issues to be discussed about during the phone conversation.

Before the phone rang, I had wanted to write about the Little Prince's rose. A bit of background information here: The Little Prince is a book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It speaks of the little Prince who left his own planet to travel the universe. This particular website has some excerpts from this book: http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/frames.html

If I had unintentionally sounded harsh in my tone of writing in the post Quite a Frustration, please forgive me, and please know that the post was not meant to be personal. I just have had a bursting need to have my voice heard because certain things are just plain unpleasant to me. This is my way of preserving my sanity when things become pretty frustrating.

I think I must have been quite like the Little Prince's rose. Yes, the rose who has thorns, who thinks that she is frightening with her thorns. The rose who has been aware since the very day that she had landed on the Little Prince's planet that she is a unique flower in that part of the universe. The rose that has a horror of draughts and insisted the Little Prince to get her a screen.

This rose must have been rather spiteful with her words, yet it was so fragile, that the best way it knew to ensure its needs are taken care of, is to verbalise them. If she did not, she would fear that the Little Prince would not know how to love and nurture her. Afterall, she is the only flower of her kind on the Little Prince's planet. The Little Prince has had no prior knowledge or experience how to care for a flower like her.

She is a flower who needed some shelter to shelter her away from the cold air on the Little Prince's planet; She needed help to have insects away from her; She needed water, and the Little Prince to water her. She needed to be appreciated for her own sake.

And perhaps if the Little Prince could have seen beyond the surface of what the rose have said, he would not have the kinds of regrets that he had. If the Little Prince could have, on his planet, looked deeper to the inherent nature of the rose, he might have seen the tender side of it. He would have appreciate the joy and fragrance that the rose had brought to his entire planet. He would have realised "the tenderness behind her poor little strategems", and would have "judged (the rose) by her deeds and not her words".

This post was meant to be abstract, and if there were difficulties in deciphering the meanings behind, perhaps it just meant that the reader has not yet entered the author's world of complexities. Perhaps, I shall quote, "What is essential is invisible to the eye". Look beyond the superficial, and then one could see the essential.