Post Date December, 03 2023
The dual autonomy, coupled with the chance of life, makes the chance that one person and another can meet at a certain point in time and space, and then tame each other very small. The difficulty of fate lies here.
Those who like The Little Prince should remember that in Chapter 20 of the book, after the little prince came to the earth, he happened to pass by a garden full of roses and saw five thousand roses in it. They looked exactly like the one on Planet B612, so he was surprised that his roses were not unique in the world. He was very sad and experienced a serious identity crisis. After that, the little prince met the fox and was enlightened by it. Finally, he realized that the most important thing in life is to establish a unique relationship through acclimation.
When they said goodbye, the fox asked the little prince to go back to the Rose Garden. The fox believed that only in this way could the little prince rebuild his confidence and use his teaching to understand the relationship between himself and his rose. So there is the following scene.
You are nothing like my rose, and you are nothing ", because" no one tames you, and you have not tamed anyone ". The roses felt embarrassed after listening. The little prince refused to stop and continued to humiliate them: You are beautiful, but you are empty, and no one will die for you. Of course, ordinary passers-by will feel like my rose. But she alone is more important than all of you, because I watered her.
The little prince's attitude was quite different from that when he first came to the garden. Perhaps he was eager to reconfirm himself, or he was too worried about his roses. The little prince didn't seem to think that his words would deeply hurt the self-esteem of the five thousand roses and put them into a crisis of identity he had experienced.
If you were these roses, how would you respond to the little prince?
I think few readers will consider this issue, because most people will not take the role of these roses to see the world. What they envy is often the rose that the little prince loves on the asteroid. However, if we stop to think, we may realize that in our real life, most people are not that rose, but just one of five thousand. If we are more honest, we even have to admit that we may not even be roses, but just small flowers and grass growing on the roadside. (Recommended to you: [Single Diary] You can raise me, but you can't tame my pride)
Although Rose is sad, the truth is not necessarily on the side of the little prince.
They could retort that it was not fair for the little prince to teach them such a lesson.
First, they had no chance to understand the truth of tame before. If the little prince had never met a fox, he might not have that insight. Whether a person can meet the enlighteners in life and receive the teachings from them depends on how much luck there is. Therefore, even if the little prince is right, he doesn't need to teach them a lesson with a winning attitude, but should have a basic sympathy and understanding for them.
Second, even if they know this truth, it takes a lot of luck to meet the little prince in life in the crowd. Even if another prince visits the Rose Garden in the future, he can only tame one of the 5000 roses at most. The little prince is too young to understand this helplessness. (Deep reading: reread what Little Prince taught me: not everyone can accompany you to the end)
Third, the little prince said that his rose alone was more important than the five thousand. This judgment was not fair, because the so-called "important" here was only measured from the perspective of the little prince himself. If we look at it from an objective and universal point of view, then we will see that every rose is equal and has its own intrinsic value, and no one is more important than others. So, since the little prince doesn't care about them, they don't have to use his standards to belittle themselves.
After this response, can the roses live with peace of mind?
I'm afraid it's not easy. Because the little prince did put forward a very important philosophical proposition here: objectively speaking, life without being tamed is worthless.
If the roses accept this conclusion, then after the little prince leaves, they will have to face a big challenge - how to find a tame object in life and live a life with a tame relationship.
The challenge is not to explain to others, but to themselves, because life is their own. If they want to live well, they must take this problem seriously.
Roses have at least two ways to respond to this challenge: either actively seek the object of tame, or give the concept of "tame" a richer connotation.
The first method is the most direct and positive, but it requires the cooperation of many conditions. For example, you should first find the object that is worthy of being tamed by you, and then ask the other party to be tamed by you. Domestication is a process of mutual selection, mutual acceptance and mutual input, reflecting a kind of mutuality.
In this case, acclimation cannot be a one-way behavior or a behavior that can be completely determined by one party. Even though these five thousand roses adore the little prince, as long as the little prince doesn't see them, everything will be in vain. This does not necessarily mean that the roses themselves are not beautiful and worthy of the little prince's love, but just means that the little prince's heart cannot tolerate them at that moment.
We know that the key to the starting point of a relationship is not who is right and who is wrong, but whether it can be matched, because there must be both one's own autonomy and respect for the other's autonomy. This dual autonomy, coupled with the chance of life, makes the probability that one person and another can meet at a certain point in time and space and then tame each other very small.
Roses should finally understand that no matter how hard a person tries, there is no guarantee of a good result in the end.
What is the second way? That is to broaden our imagination of the concept of "tame". For example, Rose can say that although we need to tame to find the meaning of life, it is not necessary to limit the object of establishing contact to the "little prince", but can be some activities worthy of devotion and dedication, such as personal career, faith, artistic pursuit or social ideal.
Is this statement a bit self-deceiving? Not necessarily. If we observe carefully, when we find ourselves around, in addition to family, career and love, many people will also devote a lot of time and effort to what they think is meaningful, and even regard it as a lifelong ambition, such as animal rights, environmental protection, green life, transformation justice, gender equality, etc.
More importantly, they will not consider these optional choices, but can provide reasons to make the important goal of justifying.
When these goals become the cause that they sincerely identify with, it means that the value behind the goals has entered their lives and established inseparable links with them, and in the deepest sense, become the basis for defining themselves and settling down their lives. At the same time, this internal connection will also generate corresponding responsibilities to urge the parties to protect and realize these values.
In this regard, if we follow the fox's teachings, this pursuit of ambition is also a kind of life taming, although here, the target of taming is no longer a specific person. With this understanding, the roses do not have to stay in the garden every day and passively wait for the little prince in their life. Instead, they can actively explore their own interests, find the cause worthy of commitment, and loudly tell the little prince that even if no one dies for me, my life is not empty. (Relationship reading: the capriciousness of falling in love with a rose: six relationship topics taught by the little prince)
Finally, there is another possibility that the fox has never taught the little prince, which is often ignored by people. It is the idea of "self discipline".
Man is both subject and object. Self-taming means that we regard our lives as objects that need to be treated with care and connected. By feeling our body, listening to our heart and cherishing our personality, we slowly learn to know and love ourselves.
We must not think that it is easy to understand ourselves. In many cases, the nearest "I" is the farthest away from us, because people will deceive themselves, self-pity, inferiority, self-indulgence, and even self-denial.
Therefore, we should pay attention to the fact that taming ourselves, taming others and taming ambition are not antagonistic or either, but can complement and support each other. We can even say that only when people learn to tame themselves well can they tame others and their ambitions in life.
Why? Because "I" is the subject of all relationships, if we can't love ourselves well and live healthy, upright and loving, it will be difficult for us to establish a good relationship with the outside world.
Readers may wonder why the little prince can tame roses, foxes and pilots so easily and build a deep friendship with each of them. The reason, of course, is not that he is particularly handsome, nor that he is particularly powerful and rich, but that he can love himself.
He loves himself, so he is easy to be loved by others.
With the above awareness, when the roses are frustrated in the outside world and it is difficult to find someone willing to die for them, they can still say to themselves: Never mind, even so, I can still enjoy the sunset every day, savor the sound of the wind blowing in the wheat field, feel the different colors of the leaves in the changing seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and then grow old. It is because the world is dark and the people are weak that we need the Little Prince to teach us to live well, walk out of loneliness, and find the courage to tame and be tamed.
