New Acropolis Presents: THE LITTLE PRINCE: SOME PHILOSOPHICALREFLECTIONS. Natani Cruz 2021 Hello! Welcome, everyone!
My name is Natani Cruz. I am a student and volunteer teacher at New Acropolis. .
. And today I'm here to share some philosophical reflections with you. about this very special work that is The Little Prince.
I find it curious that many consider The Little Prince simply as a children's book, but right in the dedication the author, Saint-Exupéry, gives us an interesting hint about it. He begins by apologizing to the children for dedicating this book to a great person, but he says he has good reason for it. He says that big person is his best friend, he goes hungry and cold in France and he truly understands the meaning of life.
But he says that if all this is not enough, he resolves to dedicate the book to his best friend when he was a child. Because all grown-ups were once children, but few remember it. So, right in the dedication, the author reminds us that for us to understand, draw important reflections from this book for life, we will have to look at it from this point of view, of this purity of the child, of that look that questions, that is curious and who truly seeks to understand the aspects around him.
It is with this gaze that I invite you all to explore, in a philosophical way, this very special book that is The Little Prince. Today I will bring some main points of this work, but I invite you all to know the complete series I made about this book which is available on Acropolis Play. The author of this book, Saint-Exupéry, was born in 1900, in the city of Lyon, France, he was a writer, illustrator and also an aviator.
His main job was to be an aviator. From a very early age, he fell in love with airplanes and delved into it and pursued a career. He writes The Little Prince in 1943 and shortly afterwards, the following year, in 1944, his plane crashes into the ocean during a mission in World War II.
He is no longer found, and it is curious that so shortly after writing The Little Prince, he passes away, so he never got to see the huge success that this work is all over the world. The Little Prince has already been translated into several languages, is one of the most read books in the world, and he has a special little place on the bookshelf of many. Just remembering a little bit about the history of the book, it tells the story of an aviator who had to make an emergency landing in the Sahara desert.
While he was sleeping, he was awakened by a little prince asking him to draw a sheep. He is very intrigued by it, and then he develops this very special friendship with this little prince. .
. The prince tells him about the planet he came from and all the adventures he went through traveling across different planets. A very important thing for us to explore this book in a philosophical way it will be for us to consider that it is all written in a symbolic language.
It is a language typical of myths and fairy tales. In fact, the author, right at the beginning of the book, he says that he wanted to start The Little Prince saying "Once upon a time. .
. " He says that for those who truly understand life, this would make perfect sense, but that because of the big people, he decided not to start like that. So he makes clear this relationship between the Little Prince and a symbolic language, which is there in fairy tales and myths.
This symbolic language is very important that we do not try to interpret it Or take it literally. . .
The symbolic language, in general, is bringing some association with the life of the human being, with the saga of the human being. So the main character will represent ourselves and the secondary characters will represent aspects that exist within us that are put out to see if suddenly people understand a little better. And this little prince represents the human being going through his saga, seeking to reflect on important aspects of life and understand a little better.
It's like there in fairy tales: We have, for example, a prince who has to rescue a princess and has to face a dragon. This prince represents the human being, he represents all of us, who has to face a giant dragon that breathes fire from its nostrils. .
. I'm sure that all of you who are there watching me face not only one, like several dragons a day that release a lot of fire through their nostrils. And to conquer what?
To conquer the princess the princess; the princess will often represent our aspect of the human soul, it is the highest aspect that exists within the human being. So this tells something very specific to our human saga, we will face the dragons, face the tests, the problems in life, for people to learn, for us to grow and for us to be increasingly aware and rescue that more human side of ours that exists within us. This is part of this human saga of growing up, to raise your level of consciousness and which is represented in a simple and symbolic way, but very deep, through so many fairy tales and so many myths, and which is also represented here in Pequeno Príncipe.
I think we can even observe that it is as if it were a dialogue by the author himself with that purest part within himself, which is the Little Prince. So today we are going to explore this way, trying to understand what these symbols that are there in the Little Prince represent in our own life, in our own human saga. Then he will have a lot to teach us.
In fact, I consider the Little Prince to be one of the most special philosophers I have ever met. It's funny that the Little Prince never rests until you have your questions answered. He always wants to understand a little bit better, he doesn't let anything go unnoticed.
So he represents this idea of the philosopher who looks at life and really seeks to understand it a little better, is the one who doesn't want to simply survive, go through life. . .
is the one who wants to be part of life, who truly wants to understand the aspects around him. This is very characteristic of the philosopher. I think the Little Prince is a model philosopher for us to be inspired by.
The book begins with that famous drawing that the author says he made inspired by a book he was reading who talked about a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. And he, with all that child's imagination, then draws this boa constrictor, and he will show his drawing to the big people, and he asks: are you afraid of my drawing? Big people look at him and say: why would I be afraid of a hat?
And then he gets very indignant about that there. How did the big people not understand that it wasn't a hat? That it was a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant.
And then he was forced to draw the inside of the boa constrictor with the elephant inside, which is to see if the grown-ups understood his design. And here the book begins in a very, very beautiful way, because it represents this process that the human being goes through, as the years go by, as you get older, who stops casting that gaze on life, who can see things from the inside, which often becomes very automatic, simply doing things and doesn't stop to try to look at things from a slightly deeper point of view. The Greeks dealt with this in a very interesting way when they spoke of the golden Aphrodite, which referred to that inner youth.
So the human being, even at any age, he could have this golden Aphrodite, this inner youth. . .
And this inner youth means always being willing to learn a little more, always with energy to explore life more deeply in all its aspects. So he shows that big people run a very big risk of simply going into a very large autopilot and stop reflecting a little more deeply on life. After this frustrating experience, the author then leaves his brilliant career as a designer.
and becomes a big person, goes to school and becomes an aviator. A beautiful day, he is forced to make an emergency landing in the Sahara desert and that's when he's woken up by the Little Prince. He will develop a friendship with the Little Prince and he will tell the aviator a little bit about the planet he came from.
He tells and the author reflects a little. . .
and he reveals an important detail for us: he says he has serious reason to believe that the Little Prince came from an asteroid called B612. He says that the prince reveals the name of the asteroid because of the big people. He says that big people need numbers, they need names for them to understand things, for them to see value in something.
If you tell someone you have a new friend, he says big people won't ask what your friend likes to play with, what is his favorite color, what is his voice. . .
they will ask: how old is he? How many brothers does he have? Always based on numbers.
. . And if you tell grown-ups that you saw a very beautiful house, painted pink with geraniums in the window and pigeons on the roof.
. . They will not understand the beauty of the house, but if you count.
. . who saw a house worth R$600,000.
. . they will exclaim: "Wow, it really must be a very beautiful, very interesting house.
. . " Big people need these numbers to believe in something that we are talking about.
He then reveals that the Little Prince would have come from these asteroid B612. The little prince then counts, for the aviator, a little more about this planet he came from. He says that in the soil of his planet there are invisible seeds that he never gets to know if the seed is from a rosebush or if that seed is from a baobab tree, and every day, he has to go there and take care of his planet's soil, because the Baobab can turn into a giant tree like the churches, and if he doesn't care, the baobab can split his planet in half.
He says it takes discipline, every morning, he wakes up, does his personal hygiene, and soon enough he will take care of the planet, check the soil of the planet, see what types of seeds are germinating, and are growing in that soil. And this is a very interesting symbol in this book, which is the symbol of these baobab trees. These baobabs represent aspects that exist within us, this is the symbolic language.
They are invisible seeds that we can never know if they are rose bushes or if they are baobabs, which can take care of everything. These baobab trees represent our human flaws, represent those aspects of life that when we don't pay attention, they grow, and they grow fast, don't they? A vanity, a laziness.
. . grows really fast.
. . and who can take care of us, and that can make our existence revolve around that flaw or those flaws.
And the little prince gives a hint: he says it's a matter of discipline, and here he brings discipline from a tremendously philosophical point of view, we talk a lot about discipline to pass some test, discipline to do a physical exercise. . .
and Little Prince is talking about this discipline from the point of view of cultivating what is most elevated, what is most human within us. Aristotle also said this. Aristotle said that virtue is a matter of practice, that is, I need discipline to be practicing the virtues every day, to remember that.
It's like every morning, after doing all our personal hygiene, taking a shower, brushing our teeth, having breakfast. . .
we had to remember what types of seeds will I want to cultivate on my planet, in my interior today, and check what types of seeds we have been growing. . .
people have been watering over the years, over the course of their lives. So this is the exercise that Little Prince recommends here. And it really takes discipline, It is a matter of practice, as Aristotle said, for human beings to build themselves, so that human beings can become as human as possible.
The Little Prince will also share about other characters that exist on his planet: what a flower! He speaks of a vain flower and difficult to deal with. that grew in the soil of his planet that gives him a hell of a job.
The flower wanted a glass dome because of the wind. . .
I wanted him to protect her from animals. . .
and he had a lot of trouble handling this flower. Until one fine day, he decides to leave his planet, to go through other experiences, to explore the world a little bit, and he will say goodbye to this flower. At that moment of farewell that's when they manage, both, especially the flower, to have very interesting reflections about the relationship they had had.
It's funny that sometimes you need that moment of farewell for us to realize some things. . .
And he goes there to say goodbye to the flower and takes a glass dome to protect it, she says like this: no, i don't need it. . .
I need to support two or three caterpillars, If I want to meet the butterflies. . .
And she confesses to the little prince that she loved him, but that she didn't know how to express it so well. The little prince is very reflective about this, he leaves his planet willing to understand a little more about life. I think this teaching that the flower leaves for him is very beautiful: I need to support two or three caterpillars if I want to know the butterflies.
It's like she brings up such an important aspect of life, where there needs to be effort for things to grow, for things to be born. Today we live in our society as a whole the idea of the law of least effort: the less effort I need to put in to achieve something, the better. It's that dream idea of making money while sleeping, for example.
So, we don't always have the idea of making an effort to achieve something, If it comes for free, if you win the lottery. . .
it is much better. . .
and the flower leaves this teaching there for us, that some effort is needed if we really want to to know deep and high aspects of life, if we want to meet the butterflies. The Little Prince then leaves for his saga on other planets where he will seek to understand life a little more. An interesting thing about these planets that the little prince will pass, is that there are seven planets from which he travels.
It's interesting that seven is a very symbolic number too, because it's seven. . .
days of the week are seven musical notes. Including seven deadly sins. .
. It's a pretty recurring number. .
. So he goes through these seven planets representing this cycle where he goes up a step, he understands a little more about himself and about life. The first planet the Little Prince visits is a king's planet.
This king is an absolute monarch who lives alone on his planet and who thinks that everything should serve him. This absolute monarch was kind of crazy, but he gives the Little Prince some interesting teachings. He says, for example, that he couldn't ask one of his soldiers to turn into a butterfly and fly around.
He says no, that wouldn't be right. He says that one can only demand from each one what he can give. This goes back a long way to a concept of justice that Plato brings to the Republic.
Plato says that justice is giving to each according to his nature and his acts. It seems that this monarch, although a bit strange, he had some sense of justice. He wanted to understand people's nature and apply a little bit of that justice.
Another interesting teaching of his is that he says that. . .
it's much harder to judge yourself than it is to judge others. In general, we manage to talk about the flaws and virtues, the characteristics of people, but that when we have to look inside, it becomes much more complex. He says that he who knows how to judge himself well is a wise man, that this would be the characteristic of a person who has a lot of wisdom, who understands life very deeply.
It is curious because the psychologist Jung said that many times a defect in another person that bothers us a lot that we look and really don't like that defect, it can represent something that, in fact, we have inside of us, and that we don't like having that inside us, and we push it away and repel it in the other person. People will also be a symbol of our life, they will be our mirror from which we learn and grow a little as a human being. This concept is funny, because it is often difficult for us to really see these aspects within ourselves that we get to put, to see it in other people too.
So it seems that it really is very complex for us to be able to understand ourselves. There is that famous sentence from the Oracle of Delphi that says: O man, know thyself and thou shalt know the universe. So great would be and so profound this knowledge about ourselves that we could have, that he could make us understand the universe, understand life as a whole.
And it really seems that this is how life is expressing itself to us. The little prince then leaves this monarch's planet and the next planet the little prince explores it is the planet where a vain man lives. It is very curious that this vain man only hears praise and he wants to be applauded all the time, the little prince is quite intrigued by this.
Interesting that the word "vanity" comes from the Latin, "vanitas", which means empty. In fact, it's a very recurring feature in all of us. and it will represent this emptiness of something inside, and since I don't have something inside, I'm going to put an image, a mask.
. . out, and I'm going to need that thing to be reinforced a lot, that I receive praise for that.
. . It's that famous war between being and seeming.
Since I can't be a human being with depth, I need to look like something, and I need to reassert myself in that thing that I seem to be outside. One of the things that vanity awakens a lot in us is competition, precisely because I need to reinforce, I need to reaffirm myself in some aspect outside and for that, I need to be better than the other and that generates this very big competition, that we have in our society, which, deep down, she has some aspects that are not so natural. .
. Comparing one human being with another is something very complex. because each of us is unique and I'm comparing two completely different people.
Even if you are a twin and have the same education, people will be different, people are different. It's not fair to compare one person to another. In fact, there would only be one person with us could compare, that should have been with us even yesterday.
Am I being a little better today than I was yesterday? And that would be a fair comparison. much more based on that being that exists within us and that we are trying to cultivate.
So the vain person will need to reaffirm a lot outside, and overall this will alienate you from other people a lot. That vain man was also alone on this planet. The little prince can't talk much, don't like this conceit very much and he then goes to the next planet, which is the planet of the drunkard.
He gets there and comes across this drunk, with several bottles. . .
and he asks like this: why do you drink? And the drunk replies: to forget! - But to forget what?
- To forget the shame I have to drink. It's a curious dialogue, the Little Prince always asking a little more. This planet of the drunk actually represents an aspect of addiction, an aspect that is also very present in human life.
Addiction comes a lot from this escape from reality. This escape from wanting to forget the problems. As my life does not generate a degree of satisfaction for me, I seek this satisfaction in addiction so that I feel some kind of pleasure as a human being.
Here on this planet, is represented through drinking, but addictions will be expressed in different ways for human beings. . .
anyway, games. . .
we have the internet, social networks that also generate a lot of addiction and that in general, this idea that since I can't have this satisfaction, how can I not find this pleasure in living my existence, in my life, I'll seek that satisfaction in some vice. So it generates this kind of escape from life, for those who are looking to understand life a little more deeply, for the philosopher, this is something very contradictory. Because the more I try to take a deeper look at life, understand life a little more deeply, I'll be able to explore it, I'll be able to make it make a lot more sense to me.
Often it just depends on us having a different point of view of life so that it becomes deeper, so that it becomes more pleasant to live. It's funny that we talk a lot about boredom, for example, boredom in life. .
. I question myself a lot if this boredom is really an outside aspect or if this boredom is not within us. .
. for lack of looking at life to seek and seek to understand it a little more, so that we can look at coexistence, look at people and see a little deeper, not just see a hat, but you see that sometimes it is a boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant. .
. and that there is something deeper that we can explore there. Then addiction will take us out of reality and the philosopher is precisely the one who wants to understand reality and create awareness of himself.
So awareness is a very important factor, if I withdraw awareness, like through an addiction, for example, how am i going to grow as a human being? How am I going to understand my existence at least a little bit. .
. What is our proposal as a philosopher? !
And the Little Prince leaves this drunken planet, not judging, not thinking he was a bad person, but feeling sorry for him, but thinking that he could be living life in a much deeper, more dignified way. He then goes to the next planet. The next planet he lands on it is the planet of the businessman.
He's a very, very busy guy. Guys, he's too busy counting the stars and he doesn't have time for anything, because he is a very serious man, and he is very busy with his work which is counting the stars. Guys, how many times do you hear this phrase a day?
"I'm too busy", "I don't have time", "I don't have time for this, I don't have time for that. . .
" Several things that we justify because of this aspect of time, this seriousness that we have. . .
I find it funny that often what makes a serious person that's it, isn't it? ! Not having time.
If she doesn't have time it's because she's a serious person. This factor of not having time, many times we consider it as something very specific to our historical moment, of our time, this globalized world, the internet and these other factors that are around us, but Seneca, a Stoic philosopher of about the year 3 BC, wrote a book called "On the Brevity of Life", in which he comes precisely to talk about the weather, because at that time people were already complaining about the same thing we complain about: they were complaining about the lack of time! In the first few pages of this book, Seneca says something very interesting: it's not that you don't have time, life has given you enough time to accomplish what you think is important, what do you think is worthy, what do you think is human.
The problem is that you are wasting your time with what is not valid. I keep kidding after I read that part of this book. .
. after I read this book as a whole, which is very good, I recommend it. .
. I'm ashamed to say I don't have time, I remember Seneca saying: It's not that you don't have time, it's that you don't know how to use your time. So this dealing with time is a human factor that lasts for years, for centuries, millennia in human history, this "dealing" a little more deeply with time.
Seneca brings some other very interesting reflections on about. . .
about this aspect of time, which is very philosophical, we can learn a lot from it in our lives. Because many times, when we are really aware, present in life, it's as if we entered a deeper dimension of time which is beyond that chronological time, those hours that we count on the clocks. It's funny that a day we live with a lot of conscience, that we give ourselves to life, it seems that it is worth for a week.
. . So time will have dimensions that depend on how much we put our consciousness into life, how much we put our heart, it seems that time can have a power to expand, but it depends on how much we can see life a little deeper.
The little prince then decides to explore another planet, and he will now stop at the lamplighter's planet. This lamplighter is a very curious guy, because he spends all day, all the time, putting out and lighting a lamp and he complains a lot. He wanted to sleep, he wanted to be doing other things, but he's there, doing his job, turning the lamp on and off.
The Little Prince comments on something very interesting about this guy, he says the following: This man is also crazy, but he is less crazy than the others, at least your work has a meaning, is the only one that doesn't seem ridiculous to me, maybe because he doesn't just take care of himself. Funny that even though he was complaining and suffering, he didn't fail to do what was due to him. Because he wasn't just busy with himself, he realized that what he was doing was important, this lighting and extinguishing of the lamp.
It is curious that the little prince brings a concept that we find in the book "Bhagavad Gita", a hindu classic, in which he talks about an action that would be a true human action, which is called straight action, an action without interest in the fruit, without interest in what that action generates, but an action that takes place in itself, an unselfish action, an action where I am not simply wanting something in return, where I realize myself in the action itself. It's funny that today we trade not only with things, we trade with feelings, with people. .
. "i'll have some feelings for you, i'll help you but you need to help me back". We are always looking for something in return for our actions.
In this book, Krishna teaches his disciple Arjuna that only a right action, an action without concern for the fruit, would become a truly human action. The little prince can identify that more human aspect in this lamplighter. He further says that this could be his friend.
He could have a friendship with that lamplighter. This aspect of friendship is interesting. Khalil Gibran, who is a Lebanese poet, speaks, in one of his books, "The Prophet", something very deep about friendship.
He says that friendship should have no other aim than the elevation of the spirit. Unless it's friendship resulted in a deep elevation of those human beings so that they become better. He says that we shouldn't look for a friend to kill the hours, but to live the hours, to share profound experiences about life, so that friendship can propel us, can build our human experience.
The Little Prince, now with that deeper look at life, can identify these aspects in this lamplighter. He then goes to the next planet. The next planet is a geographer's planet who sits and notes the experiences of explorers, but he himself never left to explore the mountains, but he swears that he knows very deeply all the mountains that have been cataloged and everything explorers have ever known.
He really wasn't willing to do that kind of thing. It's funny that an aspect represented through this geographer it is something related to a kind of pseudo intellectualism. We often get attached to the fact of understanding something intellectually, but we cannot translate it into practice.
There is a discord between what we think and what we feel and what we do. This generates a very distorted behavior in our life, because we really cannot bring to our experience what we think, what we think we have as principles and that we found valid. It is interesting that philosophy, in recent centuries, has itself gone through this process.
Philosophy today is closely linked to an aspect intellectual only in general, but the word philosophy, which is very beautiful, it means love of wisdom; and wisdom is a little different simply from an intellectual knowledge. An intellectual knowledge is to know theories, to know books and wisdom means the translation of knowledge into postures that make me better as a human being. It's me being able to make that awaken in me something that I haven't understood yet.
Wisdom requires practice, wisdom requires an increasingly human attitude to life and not just an intellectual knowledge because otherwise we run the risk of becoming like this geographer. . .
to be intellectualizing and trying to understand many things only in the mind, but not bringing that into our posture and that's exactly what we're looking for in New Acropolis: rescue this idea of philosophy as a true love of wisdom. The little prince then arrives at the seventh and last planet of his saga: planet earth. He tells something very interesting about this planet.
There are 111 kings on earth, 7 thousand geographers, 7 million drunkards and 311 million conceited, that is, that's two billion big people. I heard that number increased. .
. It's funny that when the Little Prince arrives on planet Earth, he encounters a serpent that tells him that he deciphers the mysteries of life. .
. This encounter with the serpent is also quite symbolic, because in different traditions, in different myths, the serpent symbolizes the aspect of wisdom. So, it's as if the Little Prince had already conquered a little bit of this wisdom, finding it; it's as if he had already conquered a level of greater awareness about himself and about life.
It is on this planet Earth that the Little Prince meets such a special character, which is the fox. He finds the fox, and he was kind of lonely, kind of tired, and he says: play with me. .
. She says: no, it's not like that! First, it is necessary that you captivate me.
And the Little Prince, like a good philosopher, asks: but what is captivating? She says: captivating means creating bonds. This is something very profound, very beautiful.
. . creating bonds.
. . Funny how sometimes we are very busy as a businessman and you don't have much time for this bonding thing, because bonding with human beings requires it, it takes time, dedication, just like the little prince is forced to do with the fox so that they.
. . can develop a deeper relationship.
I find it curious that we tend to have many superficial relationships and often push people away and not having this interest in creating deep bonds with each other. . .
I often see people saying that they love nature, that they love animals, who loves a beach, who loves waterfalls and plants. . .
they are very fond of nature as a whole, but the human being. . .
the human being is too difficult, I want distance from the human being. . .
But sometimes we forget that human beings are part of nature. It is a part, let's face it, quite expressive of nature. Loving nature also means loving the mystery that is within the human being.
When we seek to create a bond with a human being, it generates something very unique in our experience, because that human being is the only one and he will be able to teach us something that only he has, a vision that only he has to offer us. So this bonding between human beings it is something very important in our human saga. This is how the Little Prince approaches this fox.
He comes back the next day to play with the fox and he gets scolded by her, people. . .
He comes back at the time he wanted. . .
and the fox says it's not like that. . .
she says: if you come at four, from three I start to be happy. It takes rites. And the little prince, of course, asks: but what are rites?
And the fox says: a rite is what makes one day different from another. This is very beautiful, because it brings this idea that life has these rites happen. .
. every day the sun rises and everyone is different from each other. .
. and that when we do things at the right time, and taking into account the importance of each one of them, we make it unique. This is the most beautiful teaching I have ever seen on punctuality.
Overall, punctual people we see it as something a bit caxias, something a bit boring, but the fox is saying here that when we go to do something. . .
if I'm going to meet someone soon, from the moment I start to get ready that meeting is already starting to happen. I'll already think about the person, what we're going to talk about, how the person is. .
. and all that develops so that that moment arrives in which we find ourselves. When we are late, and we forget something behind, and leave all clumsy, we lose this mystery of life that is present there just at that moment.
And that's what the fox brings, it's the rites. We know how to see that in nature there is a proper moment for each thing, Sometimes I joke that the sun is not late to rise, of course, that this is from the movement of the Earth around the sun, but that in nature everything has the right moment to happen and never one day is the same as the other. That is, there are the rites of nature and that human beings could seek to live these rites in their lives as well.
The little prince then develops a very deep relationship with the fox. When the time comes for him to say goodbye to her, she brings one of the most beautiful teachings in the book. She says like this: Goodbye!
Here's my secret, it's very simple, you can only see well with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes. I often wonder if.
. . how many people who have already read this book actually applied a little bit of it to their lives.
. . "The essential is invisible to the eyes.
" "One only sees clearly with the heart. " It's funny that she brings this idea that we should put our heart in life a lot more. Seeing life from this point of view of our heart as if.
. . before our experiences in life, in our day to day our heart comes first.
Our heart will represent that deepest idea that exists within the human being, that most human side of him, to seek to create these bonds, create these bonds with life and with everything around you. I find it curious that many times in our routine, in one day, we deal with, and bump into, and talk to several different people. .
. and how many times do we remember that there is a heart there? That there is another heart that may be going through different things that maybe we could help, or it could be at least a little less unpleasant.
We need to look with this heart, seek to see life from a pure point of view, seek to see people from this pure point of view. Often, as the author says at the beginning of the book, we are analyzing, from the point of view of numbers, what works, what is useful, what is not. .
. and we forget to put that heart. This fox then invites us to seek to see life with a little more of our heart.
She still gives another very profound teaching to the little prince, she says that famous line: You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. This is something very beautiful and I think maybe that's one of the reasons. .
. main reasons why we don't want to captivate, create bonds, it's because there's that aspect of responsibility. The moment I create a bond with a person, the person will call me at dawn needing something, you want to come to my house.
. . and I'm going to create a degree of responsibility with that person.
Responsibility is something that is present in our life as a whole and in our human relationships. Another interesting point to consider. .
. is that responsibility is generally seen as something very negative, and we don't want responsibility, we run away from responsibilities, but the truth is that responsibility is something very special in human experience. Responsibility is something that makes us grow.
Responsibility is something that obliges us to take a stand, a more mature attitude towards life, so that we can deal with it, so that we can actually be more responsible as a whole. So responsibility is not a bad thing for human beings. Just imagine your life if you had never taken any responsibility.
. . What would you have grown?
What would we grow without the responsibilities? Responsibility is something that really invites the human being or often forces the human being to grow. We can have voluntary responsibilities, seek to have more responsibilities in life, but anyway life will send us responsibilities, so that we can create this maturity, so that we understand life from a deeper point.
In general, it is also very similar to the view that we have of the problems, as something extremely negative, extremely bad, but they also make us grow. Buddha had a very beautiful sentence, which said that pain is a vehicle of consciousness, and that pain exists, but suffering is optional. That through pain I can seek to learn and grow much more as a human being.
So responsibility is an important factor, a factor that adds up to a lot in human life, the responsibilities of life and the responsibilities towards people, the responsibility to help and make people a little bit better than we know them initially, this power of being able to add in the experience of every human being who comes into contact with us, as long as we are growing as human beings, cultivating. . .
this philosophical experience of life, this profound experience, we will be able to add a little bit to each other's lives and see this responsibility as something very beneficial. The Little Prince after all these reflections, he comes to a very interesting conclusion about the flower, the vain flower of his planet that he couldn't understand and ended up leaving her. He says like this: I couldn't understand anything, I should have judged her by her actions, not her words, she perfumed me, illuminated me.
It's like in that moment, he learned a little more about an aspect, a virtue, a value so important in life, which is love. He realizes that love was not linked to aspects of the rose's personality, to the characteristics of that rose, but what she really was, that essence of the rose. This aspect is closely linked to his understanding of this value which, without a doubt, is one of the most important in life, which is love.
How much do we truly understand about this, about love? Ancient Greek had about ten different words to talk about love. We use love for many things, don't we?
I love my computer, i love my house, i love my family, i love my mother. And we often cannot differentiate. .
. our own language limits us. .
. of being able to differentiate to what degree this love exists, what it represents. So this value for life it becomes more and more commonplace and we each time understand a little less about this love.
Love is that very special force in life that unites, that unites everything, that overcomes all the different aspects that human beings may have, that should unite the human being in his deepest aspect, love is what the Little Prince manages to understand at the end of this saga, and it is an aspect that is most important for him to be able to understand life. Quoting Jung again, he has a very beautiful phrase that he says that love is like God, both give themselves only to their most faithful servants, and here he brings this idea that love is something that human beings need to consciously strive for to conquer, for people, for life, for himself. This aspect, this very high feeling of life, that human beings need to learn to develop in an increasingly conscious way.
It is love that can lead human beings to overcome personality differences. and truly understand that essence within each one, that's when we think, for example, of a fraternity. The fraternity will be linked to this, to that feeling that overcomes differences, nationality, color.
. . and regardless of all this, human beings could unite.
Love, when we can feel it deeply, he will make our heart expand, and that by feeling love, we can replicate that for a lifetime. Love will never be linked to one aspect, or to just one person, but a love that can make us. .
. can make our heart bigger and that we can expand this love. .
. of life, this love for life as a whole. It is something that is really very special for the human being, is one of the most special things that a human being can develop, needs to develop in its human saga.
And so I'm already reaching the end of this work "The Little Prince". . .
and the little prince, at the end of the work, dies. He tells this to the aviator and he says this: Look, it's going to feel like I'm dying because my body will faint, but i will not die, don't believe it, I won't die! Here he recalls another teaching from the Bhagavad Gita, that Hindu book I mentioned.
. . that he says that what is true, never ceases to be.
Interesting that this little prince never actually died, we are here talking about him. . .
how many people reread this book and how many of us manage to keep this little prince alive inside us, manages to keep these ideas alive within us. Because in fact what is true, what are true human values, never cease to be, never cease to exist. Well.
. . this is how I end my philosophical comments on this work, such a special and beautiful book.
. . Philosophy is precisely this path, philosophy is what teaches us to be a little more like this little prince, to be a little more Little Prince, to understand life more deeply, to grow as a human being, and indeed, to add to life, to add to the whole.
I invite you again to explore, to know a little more about the work with me there in our Acrópole Play series. I hope to see you soon. Thanks!
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